Aneka Jansen 7: Hope (16 page)

‘Okay… See that door over there, the one with the “employees only” sign?’

‘It will open when you push.’

‘Excellent.’ And looking like she knew exactly what she was doing, Aneka strode over to the door, swept her hand over a card reader beside it as though swiping her pass, and stepped through.

The corridor beyond was not especially useful, but at the end of it there was a door which let them out into an area which looked like it had something to do with baggage handling. There were people there, not many, but a few. None of them seemed to feel it necessary to ask the military officer what she was doing there.

‘Got to love militarised societies,’ Aneka commented as she located a terminal which seemed to have some sort of security use. She took a small, folding computer from her bag, plugged a cable from it into the terminal and then connected it to another fibre which ran up her sleeve to the port in her neck. High collars had their uses too. Then she busied herself looking like she was running diagnostic programs while Al went to work.

‘I have her recorded arrival and transfer to holding,’ he said after a minute or so. ‘They commuted her sentence, as we knew they would do, and she was transferred to–’

‘What are you doing?’ The voice came from behind Aneka and she did not look up as its owner moved to her right side.

‘What does it look like I’m doing?’

‘Some sort of diagnostics?’

‘Very good.’

‘We weren’t informed of anything wrong with that terminal. I should call–’

Aneka popped a small notepad app to the front of her terminal display and said, ‘What’s your name?’ Her fingers hovered over the keys, waiting to type.

‘What?’

‘Your name?’ She lifted her head and looked at him, noting with some satisfaction the expression of rising panic on his face. She looked down at his name tag, nodded, and typed. ‘Thank you, Mister Prust. You have correctly followed security procedures. You will, of course, mention my presence to none of your colleagues otherwise the diagnostic test I am running on the staff here will be voided.’

‘Oh, uh, of course.’

‘Very good. Back to work, Mister Prust.’

‘She was transferred into the care of one Commander Arundal,’ Al continued as if nothing had happened.

‘Got an address?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then I guess we go see if she’s still there.’

~~~

‘I’m assuming that you can’t detect her transceiver?’ Aneka asked as they walked past the house.

‘I am not detecting it, no.’

‘But that doesn’t mean she isn’t in there… I guess this is now a surveillance op. Get me positions for optimal placement of the cameras, please.’

‘Of course. The map I was able to obtain suggests that there are rear gardens abutting the property behind. It might be wise to arrange something covering that area.’

‘Can be arranged. We’ve got a directional mic, so might be an idea to point that at the place too.’

‘And then we will need somewhere to hole up while we gather intel. I believe there is a region of new construction to the north which will provide adequate cover.’

‘Okay.’ Reaching the end of the street, Aneka turned left to circle around to the road behind their target. ‘Then I guess we contact Gwy and let them know this is going to take a while.’

Ariadne, 21.11.559 FSC.

‘She’s not in there,’ Aneka said as the latest data burst from the cameras and sound system streamed through. ‘We should have heard her or seen her by now.’

‘Agreed. The household is asleep now so we will get nothing further until morning. However, I suggest retrieving the equipment and deciding upon another course of action.’

‘Would they have had to report it if they’d killed her?’

‘A disposal request record would have been filed and I would have been able to find a corresponding record of incineration. They keep exceptionally good mundane records. No such records exist, however. Equally, no report of an escaped slave has been filed with the police. There is no record of an investigation in this area. No attempt has been made to look for her.’

‘This just gets more complicated. Okay, we know that she was being treated as someone of “special interest.” They get her here and put her in slavery. They don’t appear very upset when she possibly escapes. I mean, after listening to the goings on in that house for a couple of days, I don’t think there’s some secret torture lab under it.’

‘Agreed. They had her here for a reason. Observation, perhaps. They expected her to escape, perhaps even assisted her in some way. Certainly not reporting it would reduce the chance of her encountering problems while leaving.’

Aneka nodded, even if the action was mainly for her own benefit. ‘So… She would go to the spaceport and steal a warp-capable ship.’

‘But if they are covering her tracks for her, it is unlikely that a stolen vessel would be reported.’

‘True… Ah, but on the other hand, this kind of thing is going to take organisation. It has to be their intelligence people working on it. Do we have any idea which branch this Commander Arundal works for?’

‘I have not determined that.’

‘Right, not a priority. We’ll retrieve the gear and then I think we should go pay a visit to the naval station.’

‘That,’ Al said, sounding resigned, ‘is going to require more effort.’

‘Yeah, but you’re the best.’ Aneka climbed to her feet and activated her nanosuit. It was once again time for stealth.

‘Thank you for your vote of confidence.’

~~~

It had taken Al a couple of hours to forge orders for Ensign Curtis to work on one of the antenna arrays on the roof of the communications building. Most of that, it seemed, had been little to do with security.

‘You would not
believe
the health and safety forms!’ Al complained as Aneka checked in through the main security gate. ‘“I have read all regulations for working above three metres.” “I will be wearing a gravity support harness at all times when working within three metres of a three-metre drop.” Proctologists must have a field day with these people.’

‘A gravity harness isn’t going to be much use for a three-metre fall anyway.’

‘Of this I am aware. Apparently the Pinnacle are not.’

‘They started applying all the health and safety regs to the Army while I was in it. Not sure it saved anyone, but it certainly made things more tedious. I kept wondering when they’d declare rifles too dangerous to have in the vicinity of soldiers.’

‘Ah, well, if you were a man, it would be a twelve-metre drop. Women are delicate. I’m sure you’re acutely aware of this blatant fact.’

‘I swear this bunch are going to turn me into a feminist.’

Rooftop access was not an issue, given that Al could hack the locks, and the antenna array she was supposed to be working on was in the middle of the roof, nowhere near any drop of greater than three metres. There was a slight breeze at this height, but that just seemed to make things warmer; the planet had a distinctly tropical climate, a little too clammy for Aneka’s tastes, but she thought it would have made a good holiday resort.

‘If it were not crawling with Pinnacle?’ Al suggested.

‘There’s that.’ She hooked in through her ‘diagnostic terminal’ and Al went to work.

It took around fifteen minutes of digging before he found what he was looking for. ‘They give her a nice, juicy, fairly obvious target to steal. A light transport which had supposedly just had an engine refit and was due to be taken out for a trial run. There’s confirmation of her leaving the spaceport and she was tracked as far as orbital insertion to the local moon. After that the ship was found drifting and investigation showed that she was no longer aboard.’

‘What? Where did she go?’

‘They seem to have been expecting that. The record says “capture by Kade cannot be confirmed but is highly probable.”’

‘Kade. That was the name of the pirate they thought we might be back on that station.’

‘Yes, the captain of the Hope of Sanctuary. Coincidence?’

‘I hate coincidences. Can you find anything else out about this Captain Kade?’

‘An extensive list of crimes. Terrorism is at the top, but that seems to encompass a variety of sins. There is also a list of known associates. I’m downloading everything I can find. All the orders regarding Ella seem to be coming from the same location. It’s a naval facility on a planet called Ranson.’

‘You think we’ll find out what the Hell they’re up to there?’

‘I think it is our best option, but it means going far deeper into Pinnacle space.’

‘At this point, I don’t think that makes much difference.’

Gwy, 22.11.559 FSC.

‘Captain Anastasia Kade, or the best composite image the Pinnacle have been able to get from retrieved video.’ Al was doing show-and-tell on what he had obtained from the Pinnacle databases, and he had found a full-height simulacrum of the pirate.

‘Ella’s going to be drooling,’ Aneka said.

‘I believe she will,’ Cassandra agreed. ‘She does bear a remarkable similarity to you in many respects. The hair is longer, obviously.’

‘You mean blonde, long legs, big tits?’

‘I was not going to go into details. I assume her morals are somewhat less worthy?’

‘Difficult to tell from the Pinnacle reports,’ Al replied. ‘They are, after all, the victims of much of her depredations. They don’t record any attacks on non-Pinnacle vessels, but from the amount of things she has attacked belonging to them, it seems hard to believe she hits many other ships.’

‘So, she has a bee in her bonnet about the Pinnacle,’ Aneka said. ‘Can’t say I blame her, but that outfit is just… A sword I can understand in close confines on a ship. The gun looks out of place, but some people just like old stuff. She looks like she should be in some sort of
Playboy
pirates special.’

‘Building a reputation,’ Cassandra said. ‘She’s going for the dashing pirate look. She means to have people on her side.’

‘Agreed,’ Al said, and the image changed. ‘And next up we have a woman believed to be her senior officer. Her name is Trin, and she’s a Felix. Every image of her shows her covered in blades and little else.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Aneka said, smirking at the image. ‘Anyone else?’

‘This is Lanyon. He’s a Polymelian, an engineered race meant for hard labour. Tough, strong, and with four arms. Lanyon is believed to handle supplies for the Hope.’

‘We’re going to have to rescue Ella soon. Otherwise she’ll be walking bowlegged for the rest of her life.’

‘You know,’ Cassandra said, ‘she was calming down quite a lot, right up until the Devor incident. She
might
not end up in bed with all of them.’

Aneka nodded. ‘Not at the same time anyway. Any more?’

‘There’s one other noted, but he’s not named and they have no image data. It’s believed she has a technical genius of some sort. Her vessel appears to use some Xinti technology which would require someone quite bright to integrate into an old Pinnacle vessel.’

‘Nothing on the location she operates from?’

‘Not as such. I believe that they know where it is, but they keep their information highly compartmentalised. No one on Ariadne needed to know, so it was not there. Ranson should give us the answer.’

‘Gwy? How long until we get there?’

‘Approximately seven days, Aneka,’ the ship replied.

Aneka sighed. ‘Well, at least she’s
probably
not in any danger now.’

Gwy, Ranson System, 29.11.559 FSC.

‘This is not good,’ Aneka said softly. She was looking at the system schematic Gwy had managed to compile so far, and already it was looking like a really tough job to get to somewhere where they could grab the data they needed.

‘I have to agree,’ Gwy said from beside her. ‘They appear to be worried about cloaked vessels. They are running multiple high-definition scans of the space around their stations more or less constantly. I believe they have actually constructed stations for the sole purpose of doing so. My screens are good, but it is not improbable that we would be detected were we to go too near.’

‘Right. Okay, you’re on sensor duty. Pull out all the stops, every trick you have. Al, you’re on ECM, take the load off Gwy while she concentrates on sensors. Cassandra, see what you can do about data analysis on whatever Gwy finds.’

‘Of course, Aneka,’ the android replied. ‘What do you plan to do?’

‘Lie on the bed feeling useless until I’m needed. If Ella was here, at least I could bring her coffee.’

‘If Ella was here, we would not be.’

‘It’s a valid point.’

2.12.559 FSC.

‘The resolution of the images is now sufficiently high that we will be able to identify buildings,’ Gwy said. ‘The surface complex is extensive, but at this distance getting clear definition of function is impossible. I have managed to map the entire sensor network, and Cassandra and Al have been analysing it for weak points.’

‘And we have some,’ Cassandra said. ‘There are several quite deep valleys on the surface which would provide sufficient cover from surface sensors, but they are covered by an orbital station.’

‘That doesn’t sound like a weakness,’ Aneka commented.

‘The planet has quite a dense atmosphere making orbital scanning less effective if we take it slowly. However, Al estimates that our chances of discovery are still higher than he would like.’

‘Given that discovery would bring a very large contingent of naval ships down on our heads,’ Al put in.

Aneka sighed. ‘Do we have a target?’

‘There we have better news. There is a facility on the outer edge of the complex which is showing abnormally high EM readings for its size. It does not appear to be a communications facility, so we believe it to house computers of some form. It so happens that one of the valleys ends close to that facility. It does look heavily fortified, however.’

‘Okay… So we need to reduce our chance of discovery, and we’re going to need a distraction, something to keep them from looking down while we go in. It’s going to have to be hit and run, I think… Give me a schematic of the target site to start off with. Focus on getting as much visual detail as you can on that building.’