Aneka Jansen 7: Hope (23 page)

‘Taking each other for granted. I know. I had time to think about it too. Still… Ian Devor? I mean, I
almost
can’t forgive you for that. Almost
anyone
else, but him?’

‘I know. I’d broken up with him before the Pinnacle killed him, and he was constantly at me to start up again. Everyone’s judgement lapses now and then? So… how were Lanyon and Trin?’

‘Lanyon was a little naïve, very enthusiastic, and he acted just the way I expected, which means he started talking to keep me from going again after the second time round. Men do that when faced with insatiable women.’

‘Oh.’

‘And I didn’t sleep with Trin. We just talked. I think her tail wanted in, but she was being strict with it.’

‘Oh… So you were gathering information, not actually rubbing my nose in it?’

Aneka chuckled softly. ‘I admit to a little nose rubbing. Worked, didn’t it?’

‘I’d hit you, but I don’t think you’d notice. Did you have to make me come
quite
so many times?’

‘Yes. And when you’ve eaten and recovered, I’m going to do it again. I’m not going to take you for granted
ever again
.’

Ella whimpered. ‘You can take me a little bit for granted,’ she said in her smallest voice.

22.12.559 FSC.

‘Wasn’t this the medical bay?’ Lanyon asked as he peered around the briefing room with its long table and ten chairs.

‘Reconfigurable space,’ Aneka replied. ‘Gwy’s a little too small to have all the rooms we need, and the AIs haven’t quite figured out pocket dimensions or dimensional transcendence yet.’

‘Uh… right.’

Aneka sighed. ‘
Doctor Who
references are just wasted on some people.’

‘Lovely though this is,’ Kade said, nodding to the image of Gwy occupying one of the walls, ‘why are we here?’

‘I have to concur with my captain,’ Trin put in.

‘Okay,’ Aneka said, nodding, ‘how did the Pinnacle know you were coming? How did they know
when
you were coming?’

‘They set a trap and waited–’ Kade began.

‘They knew within a day when you were arriving.’

Gwy turned slightly and a system map appeared beside her, markers showing the positions of the station and the wrecks of the ships. ‘You have seen where the vessels are located. They know you have cloaking technology and yet they stand out in the open where you can see them. When you arrived, you would recognise the trap and leave before they could open fire.’

‘Their battle plan,’ Aneka continued, ‘was to post themselves in the shadow of asteroids and let you in to attack the station. They planted a tracking device on Ella before she even got to Ariadne which would then be activated, and then they’d have a target and you’d be dust before you realised what was happening. We took the tracker out last night.’

Kade frowned, but it was Trin who spoke. ‘It makes sense, Boss. How they knew we’d pick Ella up–’

‘They’ve been studying you for a long time. They have some pretty thorough psychological profiles, and they made damn sure Ella would end up right in your path. A bit of luck was involved, but more planning.’

‘Okay, so how did they know about the timing?’

‘We found this in the traffic we harvested from Haven,’ Cassandra said, indicating a section of wall which was now displaying an image. Everyone looked at the image.

‘Well okay,’ Trin said, ‘she’s not bad looking and she has great breasts, but I can do that?’

Lanyon, his cheeks colouring, looked at her. ‘You can?’

‘I don’t plan on demonstrating. Why are we looking at Felix porn?’

‘Because the file is fifty-two per cent larger than it needs to be for the image data it displays,’ Cassandra explained. ‘The encapsulated data file was encrypted using a Pinnacle military-grade cypher system which we were only able to decrypt using software we took from a communications and computer facility on Ranson.’ The image was replaced by a text file display, which seemed to relieve Lanyon somewhat. ‘This was the reply to a message sent out by someone on Haven. It confirms receipt of your departure time.’

‘That’s impossible,’ Kade said.

Aneka watched her, analysis software capturing every tiny expression as it worked its way across the captain’s features. Disbelief, horror, the glimmer of a thought which might mean this was somehow wrong…

‘If they have a spy on Haven,’ Kade continued, ‘they would have destroyed us long ago.’

‘Not if they want you gone, but Haven right where it is,’ Ella said.

‘Haven is the resistance against them! The one place every one of their slaves knows they can go to if they escape. The–’

‘That’s precisely the point,’ Ella broke in. ‘It gives all their subjects hope. It’s the one tiny glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Without it, all those slaves, billions of them, would have nothing to lose.’

‘People with nothing to lose have a power no one else can match,’ Aneka said. ‘I’ve seen it. When there’s no hope of really winning, a man will strap ten pounds of plastic explosives to his chest and run into a bar full of soldiers. He’ll give his life to kill that one general no one could possibly get to. She’ll die trying to kill the man who ordered her brother to his death.’

‘Haven gives them hope,’ Ella went on. ‘Hope of sanctuary, if you like. And the pirates there, except for you, prey on more ships outside Pinnacle space than in.
You
are the one they need to get rid of. People idolise you more than anyone else. You attack Pinnacle vessels and stations. You actually
succeed
in freeing their slaves and prisoners. They wipe out the Hope and kill Captain Kade, and the others will never try anything as bold as you,
ever
again.’

‘But now they’ve failed,’ Aneka stated, ‘and you’re still alive. So what happens next, Captain Kade?’

Silence fell across the room. Gwy’s crew waited for an answer, and Trin and Lanyon looked to Kade. The captain sat with her head bowed, her hair forming a curtain over her face.

‘They’ll come looking for me in Haven,’ she said softly. ‘It may be useful for them, but they won’t want it becoming a real rallying point. They’ll send in their fleet and wipe everyone out. We can’t go back.’

‘Boss,’ Trin said warily, ‘we have people with families on Haven…’

‘I know. We’ll… go to Oberian. Anyone who wants to can leave then, head back on a trader. After that…’

‘Without a base to operate from,’ Lanyon said, ‘we’ll be hard-pressed to keep supplied.’

‘We can’t go back to Haven,’ Kade stated firmly, raising her head finally. ‘It
is
the one hope of refuge people have, even if it’s a false hope. I want the Pinnacle to pay for what they did to… But not at the cost of everyone in that system.’

‘Glad to hear it,’ Aneka said. Ella was grinning brightly: she had not been entirely sure how Kade would respond. ‘So I was thinking of something a little more drastic and a little more likely to result in the Pinnacle getting knocked back a step or three.’

Kade’s eyes narrowed. ‘What exactly do you have in mind?’

‘Well, the first thing we’re going to have to do is kill Captain Anastasia Kade.’

25.12.559 FSC.

‘Ella?’ Aneka called out as she walked into their cabin. ‘Gwy said you needed me in here.’ She stopped as she saw Ella, standing beside the bed. ‘Okay…’

The pretty redhead was naked, aside from some ribbons. There was one around her hips, another around her breasts, a third tying her hands behind her back, and the last one covered her mouth. She was looking a little sheepish, but she was waiting patiently for Aneka to free her, so Aneka walked over and carefully undid the bow over her lips.

‘Happy Christmas,’ Ella said, grinning.

‘It’s… I guess it is. Totally slipped my mind. We haven’t really done anything for a few years.’ She leaned forward and their lips met, teasingly at first and then more fiercely.

‘We’ve been busy,’ Ella replied when they finally broke the kiss. ‘And now we’re going to take the time for a bit of Christmas, even if we have to steal it away from the busy. Come on, unwrap your presents.’

Smirking, Aneka tugged on the bow over her partner’s breasts. ‘Cassandra did these for you?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Thought so. That woman does such neat bows.’ Aneka’s hands cupped Ella’s breasts, sliding over the skin. Her thumbs shifted up and began teasing at nipples which stiffened rapidly. Ella let out a little moan, her eyelids fluttering. Bending forward, Aneka sucked a nipple in, flicking it with her tongue, and this time the moan was louder. Finding the lower bow by touch, Aneka pulled it free, letting the red ribbon pool at Ella’s feet. A finger slid between labia which were already wet from anticipation and found the little nub there. She began a gentle rotation over it.

‘You… you haven’t unwrapped… me properly,’ Ella panted.

‘The rule in my house was that you have to play with each toy you get before you unwrap the next one.’

‘O-oh… right.’

Aneka slid to her knees. ‘So I’m going to play with this one for a couple of hours before I do that last one. This one looks like
so
much fun.’ She leaned forward, replacing finger with tongue and then sliding two fingers up to find the spot which always made Ella squirm so much.

‘Oh… Vashma.’

Pirate Cove, Haven, 4.1.560 FSC.

‘Anastasia Kade was the best captain there was,’ Trin said. She was standing beside a glass-topped, metal coffin which was resting on a table in Nightside. Inside it was the woman she was talking about, laid out in her pirate costume, her sword beside her. She looked peaceful. ‘She fought the Pinnacle with a ferocity no one could match. She took us to new heights. She was my friend. Captain Kade!’

There was a chorus of responses from all of those gathered in the bar to see Kade off. Trin raised her glass to the coffin and then emptied it.

‘The crew have taken a vote,’ Trin went on. ‘Without Ana… It just won’t be the same. Some of us will be joining other crews, if there’s space for us. Some of us will find something else to do with our time. The Hope is too badly damaged to be salvageable. We were lucky to get home. She’ll sit as a memorial to her captain.’ She looked down at the coffin again, frowned and then said, ‘Let’s get this done.’

Eight men, including Lanyon, carried Kade’s coffin through the streets and then to the hangar bay where it was loaded into a gutted missile which Cubby had prepared, jury-rigged to follow a pre-defined course. The crew of the Hope and as many other Haven citizens as they could gather in the observation decks stood and watched as the tiny spaceship powered out of the bay and off into deep space.

Gwy.

The hatch of the medical pod lifted smoothly and Anastasia Kade struggled into a sitting position, accepting a bottle of isotonic water from Ella with a grateful smile. ‘Did they buy it?’

‘I have intercepted an outgoing transmission using Pinnacle encryption,’ Gwy said from the room’s speakers. ‘It contained a full report of the Hope’s return, your funeral, and details from a medical scan performed to confirm you were dead.’

‘Welcome to the afterlife,’ Aneka said. ‘We don’t have any houris, but Ella’s a pretty good approximation.’

‘I have no idea what that means,’ Kade replied, ‘but thanks. What’s next?’

‘Oh… Now we get to the hard part.’

Part Seven: Hope

Gwy, Haven System, 4.11.560 FSC.

‘All right,’ Aneka said as she settled onto a corner of the bed, ‘I’ve sent off the message to the listening post at Oberian. It will relay it to Shadataga via Old Earth, but we’re probably talking about three to four days before we get any reply.’

‘And we don’t know what that response will be,’ Kade stated. She was looking around the cabin as though wondering where to sit.

‘No, but I think it’ll be positive.’

‘But we don’t know so… So we just hang around out here in space and monitor communications traffic?’

‘You do. Ella and I will do some preparatory work.’

‘We’ve identified one spy, probably,’ Ella said. ‘She’s not Pinnacle, so we need to know why she’s doing it and whether there are others.’

‘They seem to organise themselves into cells,’ Aneka continued, ‘so if there
is
more than one, we should be able to work out who they are if we spend our time constructively. But that can wait until tomorrow when things have calmed down a little over there.’

As she finished, Al walked in carrying a tray upon which were glasses and a couple of bottles of dark-golden liquid. ‘We thought we should celebrate Captain Kade’s resurrection,’ he said, a smile playing over his lips.

‘What with?’ Kade asked. ‘I don’t recognise–’

‘It’s rum,’ Aneka said. ‘Real rum, not that detergent you make. Well, as real as Gwy could approximate from my memories of it.’

‘The synthesis was quite complex,’ Gwy said, appearing in one of the walls. ‘I hope it meets requirements.’

Aneka looked over at the obsidian figure. ‘As long as it doesn’t taste like it’s stripping the inside off my digestive processor, I think you’ll be on to a winner.’

~~~

‘Thish shtuff is pretty good,’ Kade said, swigging back the remains of her glass and then giggling. ‘I think I’m a bit drunk.’

Aneka watched her with a faint smile on her face. ‘You have a bit of an alcohol problem.’

‘I know. I keep finding empty bottles.’ There was more giggling and then a sudden burst of sobriety. ‘I don’t let it affect my work, and I don’t get slammed every night, but I know I drink too much. Wouldn’ve shlept with Ella that firsht time. Not proper. Washn’t right.’

‘Ella’s views on casual sex aren’t exactly like most people in this neighbourhood, are they, love?’

‘No. Probably not,’ Ella admitted. ‘Jenlay are pretty open about their sexuality, and I’m more open than most.’

‘But she’s married,’ Kade countered. ‘To you.’

‘That’s never stopped us,’ Aneka replied. ‘I was pissed off at her about Devor, but that was because she kept it secret. That and because it was Ian Devor. No, I
expected
her to have slept with you and Trin by the time I caught up with her.’