Aneka Jansen 7: Hope (18 page)

‘Docking gantries. Is that a bay door?’

‘Probably.’

‘It’s rotating. Spin gravity. Which is kind of low-tech, but energy efficient. Okay… Let’s get in closer and observe. That looks like the best place to go hunting, at least initially, but we should make a more thorough assessment first. Look out for radio traffic. See if you can identify Kade’s ship.’

‘There is the possibility that they have already left,’ Gwy pointed out.

‘I know. Get a course plotted for that border station. Hopefully, if they have gone, we aren’t too far behind.’

Gwy gave a nod. ‘Unless they have upgraded their vessel’s drive system, I
am
significantly faster.’

Aneka grinned at the AI’s image. ‘You’re just the most awesome ship in the galaxy, Gwy.’

‘Second most awesome. Aggy is the
most
awesome.’

‘I bet she would agree with me.’

‘Why yes, she would. But she is blinded by adoration.’

Pirate Cove, Haven.

‘Pirate Cove? Seriously?’

‘That is what the inhabitants appear to call it,’ Al replied. ‘Your gun will not be remarked upon and I believe that eschewing your jacket was a wise move. From our analysis of the message traffic between asteroids, you are not exactly a good exemplar of a pirate, but close enough.’

Aneka glanced down at her unitard and boots. The former of those was a new fabrication which she had made precisely because she was hoping to see Ella again. It had a slight translucency to it, just enough to give a hint of the body beneath. Ella had always liked dressing her in that kind of clothing and Aneka was going back to that style to indicate that there were no hard feelings about Devor. She was still expecting her redhead to go on a guilt trip, but that they could work through. The fact that this outfit suggested that she was pirate crew made her wonder just what kind of pirates she was dealing with.

‘The kinky variety, obviously,’ Al put in.

Shaking her head, Aneka stepped out of the shadows and into the open, park-like area which she had found once Al had hacked his way through the airlock controls.

‘It looks nice enough,’ Aneka commented.

The park itself was primarily grass, but there were a few trees, most of them belonging to species Aneka did not recognise. This section was a strip surrounded on three sides by structures which were likely housing. She could also see structures further around the ring which had the straight rows of more cultured growing practices; it seemed likely that those belonged to hydroponics plants supplying fresh vegetables to the station, and maybe to other stations as well. Above them, looking past the central hub area which seemed industrialised, Aneka could see denser, rather less wholesome-looking structures.

‘What’s the population here?’

‘Thirteen thousand, estimated.’

‘Somehow I’d expect to see more people in the park.’ There were not large numbers on the grass. There were enough to suggest being there was not against whatever rules the place had, but there were not that many, and none of them were children.

‘Perhaps there is more activity in the core section.’

‘Maybe, but we’ll do this systematically. We’ll go through this area and then head into the other ring when we’ve got the feel of this one. Gwy? Are you getting anything?’

‘Not of specific interest,’ the ship replied. ‘I am still getting no indication that any of the vessels here are Captain Kade’s, though several appear to be pirate ships. I have succeeded in tapping into their main network, however. Cassandra and I are searching through it now.’

‘It seems to have been created by a committee of idiots,’ Cassandra added. ‘There’s little organisation. The structure is haphazard at best. I believe the leadership of this place is relatively undisciplined. Be careful.’

Aneka allowed herself a smile. ‘From what I’m seeing, there’s nothing much here that can give me more than a scratch. The tech is as haphazard as the data structures. Some of it must predate what the Federation had and there’s nothing much at the level of the Pinnacle.’

‘And the populace appears to be keen to give us a wide berth,’ Al added. ‘They seem almost afraid.’

‘That isn’t going to make this easy,’ Aneka replied. ‘It also seems a little odd. You’d think if this place hosted most of the pirate ships they’d be used to the crew.’

‘Perhaps,’ Cassandra said, ‘Haven is not such a haven after all.’

~~~

Bar number four appeared much like bars one through three, but perhaps a little less reputable. The first three had featured bored staff serving customers who also looked more or less bored, and who made sure they never caught her eye. There had been few people around who seemed to have large amounts of money, and they were generally dressed in more conservative clothes than Aneka, but most had some form of weapon about their person.

This one had more pirates in it, though they did not look like very good pirates. The clothing was heavy on the leather, and there were more weapons. And the almost entirely female serving staff were topless. Well, technically they were all wearing a waist cincher which gave them a bit of lift, but they were bare-breasted and more skittish than the girls in the other bars.

‘Low rent or what?’ Aneka commented silently.

‘Somehow more of the kind of thing I’d expect,’ Al suggested. ‘Though the staff should be sassy and making ribald comments to the patrons.’

‘I don’t think real pirates actually had that kind of life. I mean, the sea-going ones. And from what I’ve read, the few that used to operate around the Federation were more business-like than that. This is like…’

‘People playing at being pirates?’ Cassandra suggested over their comms link. ‘The social communications we’re monitoring tend to romanticise the people on this station. There are a number of sites hosted on remote servers which devote themselves to particular captains. Kade has several.’

‘That’s sort of like the old pirates, I think. There was a lot of romantic twaddle talked about them back when they were hitting ships in the Caribbean.’

‘It definitely seems that they are portrayed in a relatively heroic light. Some of the postings could almost be classified as idolising them. We’re also cataloguing a lot of traffic which heavily vilifies the Pinnacle.’

‘To be expected, I guess.’ Aneka drained her glass of the beer she had ordered. ‘The beer is actually not that terrible. Someone must be growing hops. There’s a shop across from this bar. I want to check what they’re selling.’

‘A shopping trip at this time?’ Al asked.

‘Curiosity. I’m wondering what they make to sell to the locals.’

The shop was a fairly large, open sort of place with a lot of benches with goods on. It looked a little like the kind of general store you saw in Wild West movies. Aneka was not entirely sure that they had existed in reality, but the idea seemed a little boring to have been made up. There were some interesting similarities and also some significant differences.

‘Do the clothes here look handmade to you?’ she asked as she looked at a pair of leather jeans which probably would not have fitted her hips.

‘The irregularity in the stitching suggests they are,’ Al replied. ‘All of the goods here seem to have been manufactured by hand rather than fabricated. Though I can’t speak for the drugs.’

There were racks of them. Tubes of powder, ampules of fluid, all of them on open display at the back of the store. It all appeared entirely manufactured; none of the chemicals seemed like they were refined from a plant or anything similar.

‘There has to be a lab making this stuff locally,’ Aneka said. ‘There’s too much variety for them to be shipping it in. And the clothes… There’s not enough space on this station for that kind of production without it being a sweatshop. I think you were right, Cassandra. Haven isn’t quite the refugee utopia it seems.’

Leaving before some assistant could attempt to sell her anything, Aneka threaded her way further into the maze of buildings, and that was when she found the brothel. It was dimly lit and there was a bar, but its nature was obvious from the supply of scantily clad people, most of them women, scattered around the lounge area. Aneka wandered over to the bar and ordered another beer, paying with one of the coins they had manufactured on Gwy. Then she sat on a stool and peered around.

The notable thing was the women wearing odd collars of curled, silvery metal. They had a look about them which did not match the other staff. There seemed to be something broken about them and Aneka pulled a small hand scanner from where it was sitting on her right hip, instructing Al to run an analysis on the nearest one.

‘Human,’ Al said as the results started to come back. ‘One of the subspecies anyway. Sending genome data to Gwy for analysis. The collars are electronic… Some form of neural stimulation device.’

‘They do
not
look stimulated. In fact, they look–’

‘What’re you doin’ with that?’ Aneka looked up to see a heavy-set bouncer with a blaster of some sort on his hip glowering at her.

‘Comms unit is on the blink,’ she replied, giving the sensor box a slap.

‘That don’t look like a comms unit.’

Aneka looked the man up and down. Muscled, but overweight. No hair. Facial tattoos. Maybe an ex-pirate, maybe just a wannabe. Almost certainly a bully. She slipped off her stool and pulled herself up straight; she was an inch or two taller than he was. ‘Are you calling me a liar?’

Silence fell across the room. Very suddenly the bouncer seemed to have found himself alone facing an angry woman who was probably from one of the pirate crews, and he knew he was alone, because the other three men in the room who seemed like they had the same job had just made themselves conspicuously absent in a hurry.

‘Uh, no, ma’am.’

‘Good, because now I’m going to have to go back to my ship without getting any, so someone standing in my way is likely to discover how pissed off I am.’

The bouncer almost fell over his own boots in his urgency to step aside as Aneka marched for the door.

‘Aneka,’ Gwy said as Aneka set off down a random street in what appeared to be a foul mood, ‘the genetic signature of that woman matches the general pattern for a Pinnacle female.’

‘She was Pinnacle?!’

‘Apparently. Further, I found records of the type of collar she was wearing. They are employed on Pinnacle worlds to control slaves. Neural induction elements allow the wearer’s pain receptors to be stimulated on command.’

Aneka’s mood had become about as foul as it looked. ‘I am really starting to go off this place.’

~~~

By the time Aneka had covered the entire habitation section of the ring, the place was going into a night cycle and further investigation slowed as people left the streets.

She had a slightly more balanced view of the place, but the balance was skewed to the negative. Along with a fifth bar which was not much better than the fourth, she had found a massage parlour with a sign saying that customers wanting more than a massage should enquire at the brothel. On the other hand, the people making clothes and small electronic devices in the workshop she finally located were all in slave collars. Many looked like they were Pinnacle, but not all of them.

‘Debtors’ prison,’ Aneka mused as she made her way up to the core where she could cross into the central ring. ‘Back in Victorian times, maybe earlier, they had prisons you were sent to for debt. You got out when your debt was paid, which might be never. I’m betting the people in the workshop who weren’t Pinnacle ran up a debt they couldn’t pay, or it could be punishment for some other offence.’

‘The social structure seems anarchic,’ Cassandra commented. ‘It is very much a case of “stand up for yourself” through most of the colony. I believe some of the other asteroids are a little more heavily policed, but I doubt people are routinely arrested on this one. Beaten up seems more likely. Working off a debt, however, seems almost like a more pleasant alternative.’

‘I’m willing to bet it isn’t. Does this look like a refinery to you, Al?’

‘Probably refining hydrogen for ship engines,’ Al replied. ‘I would not classify it as entirely safe to live under.’

‘Better and better. Let’s see what the midsection is like.’

13.12.559 FSC.

The answer, it turned out after a lot of hours dredging through the place, was ‘not exactly brilliant.’ The core region of the station was better maintained, the housing seemed of better quality, there was a clinic which was well-staffed and clean, and the brothel staff looked happier. The ‘common’ people there were less afraid: they seemed respectful of the pirates more than scared, but they still kept their distance unless approached.

There was also a bar which Aneka had been in several times, scanning the patrons for signs of Ella. It bore the name Nightside and was pleasant enough, and as the day drifted on and she had found nothing, she went to the bar and tried the one thing she had avoided but figured was the best of the last-resort bets.

‘What can I get you?’ the girl behind the bar asked. She was short, kind of cute with a pert little nose, bright blue eyes, blonde hair, a vacant smile, and substantial cleavage wedged into a tight, white top.

‘Whiskey? And maybe some information.’

‘Not rum?’ The girl grinned.

‘Whiskey.’ Aneka had tried what they called rum. It had a flavour reminiscent of brandy mixed with burnt sugar and paint thinner. ‘I’m looking for a woman.’

‘My day has suddenly grown brighter.’ The barmaid turned to the optics at the back.

‘Not too tall, above average breasts, fit, long red hair. Probably came into town recently.’

Placing a glass in front of Aneka, the girl peered at her for a second. ‘Does she owe you money?’

‘She broke my heart.’

‘Huh. I might have seen her. I might know where she is.’

‘And what would it cost me to find out?’

A smile played over the girl’s lips. ‘I’m Naseena and it’ll cost you… just a couple of hours of your time. I’m off duty in forty minutes.’

Aneka looked her up and down. ‘You drive a hard bargain, but I think I can accept the price.’