Aneka Jansen 3: Steel Heart (9 page)

‘Okay. Lovely.’ Ella frowned, looking out at the gathering gloom. Her eyes automatically adjusted, brightening the darkness. There was no sign of anything moving out there. ‘So they need to eat. Do they sleep?’

‘No idea.’

‘So we don’t know whether we can go out at night… It’s a neat solution. Objectively, it’s a clever design for a weapon. The disease converts people into a vector for the disease. The vectors spread the disease, but they also kill people uninfected, and then they’ll eventually kill each other for food… You said they stopped attacking to feed?’

Kottigan swallowed. ‘Yeah.’

‘So they aren’t inherently hostile. They kill for food. If they’re not hungry they won’t attack unless attacked. That could be useful to know. I don’t suppose we know how many there are?’

‘We had a complement of four hundred and change. How many were infected and how many were just killed I’m not sure.’

‘Over a hundred of them then, maybe a couple of hundred. Gopi.’

‘Yeah,’ Kottigan said. ‘Gopi’s right.’

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Ella blinked, not sure why she had woken up until she heard her name called again. She turned and looked at Kottigan. The man’s skin looked reddened in the dim overhead light and bore a sheen of sweat. Ella gasped.

‘Yeah…’ His voice was weak, barely audible in fact. He pointed at his carbine, leaning up against the flight console. ‘Think you can use one of those?’

‘Not well, but…’

‘It’s more powerful than the pistol, holds a bigger charge.’ Reaching to his waist, he plucked a short, thick cylinder from his belt, and then unbuckled the belt and handed it across to Ella. ‘Spare mags… two grenades. Careful with those. Directions on the case.’

Ella looked at the cylinders on the belt, and then the one Kottigan was holding. ‘What… what are you going to do with that one?’

‘I’m not going to become one of those things, kid. If I get lucky, maybe I can take a few of them with me.’

‘Right…’

‘Good luck.’ He climbed to his feet, wobbling slightly and catching himself on the chair back, and then started for the hatch behind the flight deck.

‘Goodbye, Kottigan,’ Ella said.

She waited in silence, listening for any sound, for seven minutes, according to her internal chronometer. When it came it was little more than a dull thud in the distance. She wondered whether he had managed to take any of the creatures with him.

~~~

‘Kottigan’s gone,’ Ella said as she walked into the lounge.

Corazon looked up at her from where she was sitting on one of the couches. ‘We lost two more last night. Maybe… maybe they went before they could infect anyone else.’

‘Have you any idea when it starts to get communicable? The sweating…’

‘The conversion process generates a lot of heat, hence the fever. That might also be a means of spreading it, but none of the notes gave a definite answer and I wasn’t able to determine one for sure.’

Ella looked at her for a second and then said, ‘But you think you know.’

‘I think we’re fucked,’ Corazon replied, her voice barely above a whisper. Then she raised her voice a little. ‘I won’t end up like them. See to it I don’t end up like them. Please.’

Ella looked at her, horrified. ‘I’ve never killed anyone…’

‘You won’t be. You’ll be shooting a corpse.’

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Ella slipped out of the forward hatch of the shuttle just as the sun was starting to rise, turning and pressing the close button. Kottigan’s carbine was slung over one shoulder, his belt with one grenade on it was over the other. When the hatch locked shut, she started walking towards the facility, watching for any sign of movement.

About halfway back she stopped and looked at the small disc-shaped device in her left palm. It was the cap of the second grenade. She had read the instructions carefully before she had handed the grenade body to Corazon. The woman was lying on one of the couches in the lounge now, her face red and covered in sweat. Waiting.

Ella placed her thumb over a red button on the inside of the cap, closed her eyes, and pressed down. The explosion was little more than a thud; all that fire and compression contained within the pressure hull of the shuttle. She remembered the look of gratitude on Corazon’s face. She remembered what Corazon had told her in the darkest hour of the night. The bitch had not deserved that much compassion.

She pressed forward towards the station. She needed to find food, which meant going to the canteen area before heading to her room. It would be dangerous, maybe, but without food and water she was going to starve before there was any chance of being rescued. Maybe she would run into Nayland on the way. Then she could shoot him in the face and do something good with the day.

The head creep of research had slipped out through one of the rear hatches after three more people had come down with the nanofever. Ella was not sure that he was infected, but given the incubation period Corazon had suggested it was pretty likely. He might still be on his feet, or he might already be a pupae somewhere. Really she did not care, but shooting him would have been nice.

So far Ella was showing no symptoms. She had had a sudden moment of panic mid-morning when it had felt as though her temperature was spiking, but that had subsided quickly. The only viable explanation was the nanobots in her blood. She vaguely recalled a programme she had watched on the potential horrors of nanotechnology and some expert claiming that if terrorists deployed nanotech weapons, nanotech defences could be made to destroy the invaders before they could do harm. If Ella’s ‘blood cops’ were doing rather more for her than had been initially suggested, maybe that included destroying attacking nanomachines.

She saw nothing all the way to the facility, but the doors were sitting open when she got there. She closed them behind her. If there was anything inside then sealing it in with her was not going to matter, and if there was not then maybe they were not intelligent enough to open the locking wheels. Besides, it kept the heat in.

The corridors were deserted, so was the canteen, for which she thanked any deity who might be listening, and the universe if they were not. She had decided that her room was the safest bet because it was high up, out of the way, and she thought she could secure the door. Theoretically the labs were safer, but she figured that there could be several of the creatures down there, and the emergency stairs would have been opened up for evacuation, which circumvented the facility’s security. Being underground had not seemed like a good idea either.

Finding a trolley in the store room at the back of the canteen, she loaded it up with whatever sealed food and water containers she could manage, and two brooms which were set against the wall in a corner, and headed for the central lift. The creatures had to be somewhere, but where she was not sure. Maybe they just did not know she was there yet. Maybe they were off somewhere killing each other for the meat. ‘Vashma, I hope so,’ she muttered as she waited for the lift to reach the top level where her room was.

The room was as she had left it, untouched. Her belongings, which she had not even given a thought to as she had escaped with Kottigan, were all still there. Pushing the door closed, she turned the wheel and then jammed the two adanymax broomsticks into it crosswise. When she tried the wheel again, it jammed against the sticks, which were jamming against the floor. Just to be sure, she took the desk chair and did her best to wedge that under the wheel too.

Ella nodded. Even if the things were stronger than normal, she doubted they were going to get through that. She was safe. Pulling off her helmet, she dropped onto the bed.

That was when she started crying.

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‘As this old year turns and the new one begins,’ Aneka said, ‘we give thanks for all that has been, and look forward to all that is to come. The Long Dark is gone and we look into the light. Let this First Day be the first of many where we strive to be the best we can be and fight to keep the darkness at bay.’ She took a drink from her glass, along with the rest of the Brigantia’s crew, and then she added, ‘I have to find someone older than me to do this with.’

‘I’d say,’ Anderson said, ‘that you’ll have a tough time doing that.’

‘I’m only the oldest on a technicality.’

Anderson laughed. ‘Gets me out of doing it. On Navy ships it’s usually the responsibility of the most senior officer. Having you here gives me an excuse to shirk.’

‘Seems to be a common theme.’ Aneka looked down at the glass and sighed softly.

‘You okay?’

‘I usually do this with Ella. I was hoping I’d be back in time…’ She shook herself. ‘I’m sure she’s gone over to Gillian Gilroy’s place. In twenty minutes she’ll be giggling and suggesting a threesome in the hot tub.’

Anderson reached over and clinked her glass against Aneka’s. ‘Well then, I’m sorry you’re missing out. Chance and Shari would oblige if you gave them half a chance.’ She grimaced. ‘You know what I mean.’

Aneka smiled at her and then looked across at the pretty blonde pilot and the handsome technician. ‘Yeah… yeah they probably would.’ She looked down at her drink again, wondering what Ella was really doing.

Hayward Alpha Research Facility.

Toasting the Renewal with water was not how Ella had wanted the year to start, but she knew her alcohol tolerance was lousy and the last thing she needed was a hangover. She had barely managed to struggle through the little speech as it was. The words had tasted sour in her mouth, she had been fighting back sobs most of the way through it, and Aneka was not saying them.

The last time she had had to recite the Renewal was when she was thirteen, over sixty years ago. She had been allowed to stay up for the first time, and she had been given a small glass of wine and a card with the words on. She had read it through three times before it got to midnight, determined that she would do a good job. The headache she had suffered through in the morning had almost been worth it. Ever since then she had been with someone older on First Day. She had
never
been alone before.

The reason she was not taking a chance on drinking was that she had worked out why none of the creatures had been around when she left the shuttle. Their numbers had been growing over the past couple of days. Putting it simply, most of the ones at this site had not hatched, and now they were coming out.

Still, she figured she had enough food to last her for a month before she had to try to find more. When she finished a bottle of water, she refilled it from the tap in her bathroom and put it aside. She was not sure that the facility’s environmental systems would keep functioning, but she was also not sure that drinking the water was safe. She was saving that for when the bottles ran out. Which just left her waiting.

Saying the Renewal had made her realise what she was really waiting for. She was waiting for Aneka to come and rescue her.

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‘The report from the Delta Lantilla has come in, ma’am,’ Truelove said as she walked into Winter’s office. The room was not large, and while the deep, red paint on the walls made it feel warm, it also tended to make it feel smaller still. The furniture, made from actual, real wood, was also dark in colour and quite large, and that did not help either. On the other hand, Truelove felt, it did make speaking to Winter in her office feel more intimate somehow.

‘I know,’ Winter replied. ‘I’m read… I’ve read it.’ She looked up from the screen. ‘No radio contact at all, signs of activity on the surface, but those signs are “unusual.”’

‘They sent detailed sensor logs. I could have one of the techs…’

Winter waved away the suggestion. ‘If we had the raw data they might be able to find something, but I doubt it. A frigate isn’t equipped to do that kind of analysis. It’s a shame the Delta class isn’t equipped with a shuttle. Well, this is an interdiction operation. Their orders under these circumstances are that no one goes down to that planet; anyone coming up is to be arrested. They
are
authorised to use deadly force.’

‘You don’t want to send an extraction team?’

‘Yes, I do. And that team should be arriving here in four days. I’ll need you to arrange some paperwork for me…’

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Aneka was annoyed. The Brigantia had arrived over an hour ago, docking with one of the two giant space stations in geosynchronous orbit over New Earth, and she had wanted to be off the ship and hugging Ella as soon as was humanly possible. Instead she had been told to stay in her cabin until ‘someone from the Administration’ arrived.

Most of the crew had disembarked. Scotts was in the engine room, going over the systems in preparation for an inspection by the engineers who would be refitting the ship after its brush with death. Anderson was in her cabin with Daventry going over all the mission reports and filing the last one to cover their flight back to New Earth. None of them had time to chat, so Aneka just sat in her room and fumed.

When the door chimed, she more or less screamed her response. ‘Finally! Come in!’

The woman who stepped through the door was a total unknown for about half a second. She was tall, long in the leg, tanned, and of course attractive. The long legs were enhanced by red thigh-high boots with spiked heels. Her face was kind of narrow, but her cheeks gave it more fullness, cushioning the hard edges. She had moderate breasts, but it seemed like her nipples were fighting a rear-guard action to push through the short, red dress, with mesh sides, that she was wearing. Her hair was short, wavy, and the kind of dirty-blonde colour Aneka’s had been before the Xinti had got hold of her, and the eyes were dark, though Aneka thought they were more like indigo than brown or black. She did not look like anyone from the Administration, and the ID pulse Aneka received almost immediately sort of confirmed that.

‘Miss Jansen, I’m Elaine Truelove, Lieutenant Commander with the Federal Security Agency. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.’