Aneka Jansen 7: Hope (25 page)

‘Well, there’s no point in worrying over that now,’ Ella said. ‘We need to find this missing agent. Who would have the kind of access Naseena mentioned, and communications equipment?’

‘Communications equipment which I am unable to monitor,’ Gwy put in. ‘All the encrypted messages I have discovered have come through Naseena’s system.’

‘I should have thought that was obvious,’ Cassandra stated, her gaze turning to Kade.

The platinum blonde looked up, frowning. ‘What? I’d never–’

‘No,’ Aneka said, ‘but she’s right. It pretty much has to be one of the other captains.’

‘Shit. It makes a horrible sense too. Some ships have been taken out by Pinnacle ambushes and… It always seemed like they were the more careful ones, and the ones who hit the most Pinnacle transports. I was always careful about information. No one was supposed to know about the last target until we were in flight. I worked the same way on every big target. The others were never so security conscious.’

‘The attack on station two-oh-six,’ Ella said. ‘You had to come back here to get the last details you needed?’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’

‘So who provided them?’

Pirate Cove, 6.1.560 FSC.

Thorder Dron was a short, stocky man, balding with grey in what hair he had left. He had, according to Kade, been trading between Oberian and Haven for over a century, and she was quite sure of his integrity, within certain bounds. He did not like the Pinnacle one little bit, but he also hated to charge a fair price for anything when he could get away with overcharging. Aside from that, she trusted him.

Aneka was not quite so trusting, but willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Unfortunately, he did not know Aneka from Adam. ‘Border station two-oh-six? No idea what you’re talking about.’

Sighing, Aneka looked across his desk at him, her software picking out the micro-expressions which gave away nervousness, defensiveness, and the fact that he was lying. ‘I know you gave her the information, because she told Trin, and Trin told me. We think she was set up. We want to know who did it so we can remove their internal organs systematically, and very slowly.’

‘You don’t think–’ Now there was outrage beginning.

‘Trin says you’re trustworthy. Of course, they sent me to talk to you and I’m basically a hired killer, so…’

‘I gave her good intel! It cost me too, but someone has to stop those bastards from taking over the galaxy. I might not be up to fighting now, but I can help where I can.’

‘Okay, so where did
you
get the information?’

Dron’s cheeks coloured. ‘Uh, there’s a girl in the brothel near Nightside…’

‘I somehow knew we would end up there,’ Al commented.

‘I figured it would be the cheap one in Elysium Falls,’ Aneka replied.

~~~

Except that the prostitute had got the information from pillow talk. She had been quite keen to explain because it made her feel like a secret agent. She was sure that the man who had told her had no idea that she would pass it on…

But he had, in fact, passed the information on to several people he had been told would probably get it to the right ear.
He
had been told about it by a man who worked in the hangar bay and neither of them wanted the information traced back to them in case the Pinnacle ever found out, but the technician was not the actual source either.

‘How did this
ever
work?’ Al asked as Aneka stalked through Elysium Falls in search of the next link in the chain. ‘Aside from the sheer improbability of this eventually getting where it was supposed to, the potential for distortion seems far too high.’

‘I’m guessing, but I figure we’re following the chain that worked. They probably sent the same message out through multiple routes. The only person willing to actually attack a border station is Kade, even with the kind of loot on offer that they were baiting the trap with. We could check up with Kade and see whether she got the initial information from Dron. I suspect she didn’t. She probably has a fair few people keeping an ear out for interesting bits of information on the Pinnacle and she’s pieced all this together from multiple sources.’

‘I still think this is an insane way to get information out. Target sighted, just coming out of the brothel.’

‘Told you we’d end up here.’ Aneka shifted her direction slightly and followed the man her in-vision display was highlighting. He was short and he shuffled more than walked. He could have been anything from twenty to ninety since he was dressed in a long coat with the collar turned up, and the only recognisable feature from the back was his hair, which was thick, untidy, and black.

He wandered down an alley, made a couple of turns and seemed to be heading for the housing district, Downside. Aneka continued after him, not really hiding the fact that she was after him, and so was unsurprised when she turned a corner to find him waiting for her with a drawn knife.

‘You’re following me,’ he growled. Up close, he looked less pleasant than she had imagined. The skin on his face had an odd, reddish mottling over most of the left side, his nose was twisted from one too many punches, and his eyes were a watery grey. The facial marking looked more like a rash than a birthmark, but then he had just come from the brothel…

‘I just want to talk, Mister Vetch,’ Aneka told him. ‘You obtained some information about Pinnacle ship movements–’

Vetch shifted forward, his arm stabbing out. He was pretty fast for a man who shuffled, but Aneka saw the changes in expression as he decided to attack. Her left arm swept out to brush the strike aside while her right grabbed him by the throat, lifting him off his feet. He let out a strangled, gurgling noise and then a grunt as his back was slammed into the wall.

‘We may have a winner,’ Al commented.

‘We may have a paranoid loser,’ Aneka replied, twisting the knife out of Vetch’s hand and tossing it down the alley. Aloud she added, ‘That was not nice. I’m going to think you don’t like me. Let’s start again. I’ll let you go, you tell me where you got the information from, and then I won’t be mad at you for attacking me with a rusty kitchen knife.’ She let go and Vetch fell a foot to the ground, staggering and trying to press himself back against the wall.

‘He’ll kill me.’

‘I get a name, or you’ll wish
I
had killed you.’

‘Klish. He’s a crewman on the Baleful Eye. If he finds out–’

‘The only way he’ll find out is if you tell him. So don’t. Now get lost before I decide to break your nose, again.’ She watched as he scurried away, grabbing his knife from where it had landed. Inside her mind she said, ‘Get on to Gwy. Get her hunting through everything we have on the Baleful Eye. Oh, and tell them I’m coming back. I feel like I need to be disinfected after touching that.’

Gwy.

‘The Baleful Eye,’ Kade mused. ‘It’s Daven Sorien’s ship. He isn’t the
last
person I’d expect to be working for the Pinnacle, but he’s not high on the list. He’s taken down a few Pinnacle slave transports. The Baleful Eye was stolen from a Pinnacle shipyard.’

‘Or they gave it to him,’ Aneka replied. ‘And letting him take a few shipments of slaves once in a while would help his cover. Currently he’s our best suspect.’

‘Unfortunately,’ Gwy said, ‘the Baleful Eye left the system two days ago. We cannot investigate it at this time.’

‘I’ve been examining the information available about the ships currently in the system,’ Cassandra put in. ‘None of them are exactly upright examples of moral propriety, but they have been around since before the Hope of Sanctuary came here and there is a lot of history to work with. I do not believe any of them are likely candidates. They are, I believe, not successful enough.’

‘Daven’s always been successful,’ Kade admitted. ‘The Eye is a powerful ship, almost a match for the Hope, but he’s pulled off some pretty daring raids even if you consider that.’

‘So he’s either really good,’ Aneka said, ‘or–’

‘Aneka,’ Gwy interrupted, ‘I have detected a gravitational anomaly in the outer system. No transmission, just a brief gravitational pulse. Perhaps a message drone has been sent through.’

‘Get us out there then.’

‘I don’t get it,’ Kade said, frowning. ‘A gravitational anomaly means a message drone?’

‘Shadataga has wormhole technology,’ Ella replied, grinning. ‘If we know where we’re going, we can get there in an instant. We can do real-time comms over more or less any distance too, but they probably didn’t want the wormhole open that long.’

‘Wormholes? You travel through wormholes?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Damn. I’m starting to actually believe this might work.’

~~~

There was no sign of a probe as they reached the area of space Gwy had detected the anomaly in. There was very little of anything, in fact, but the ship was sure there had been something.

‘I am reading trace quantum fluctuations which are common after a wormhole event,’ Gwy stated as her systems scanned over the area and her image on the wall screen frowned. ‘I am sure that I detected… oh!’

‘Gwy?’ Aneka said, frowning at the AI.

‘I am detecting graviton emissions, coded ones. They did not send a probe.’

‘Then what? Oh.’ Behind Gwy, the screen changed to show the space in front of the ship and in it, appearing as if from nowhere, was the Amethyst Hyde. One of her hangar bay doors was opening, inviting them in. ‘Get us in there, Gwy. Then you can tell Aggy what to monitor for and take the afternoon off.’

‘Thank you, Aneka. Aggy is very pleased to see me.’

‘Aggy?’ Kade asked.

‘Formally Agroa Gar,’ Aneka replied, ‘but we call her Aggy. She’s the AI aboard the Amethyst Hyde. Gwy has a relationship with her. It’s… complicated.’

‘More complicated than you and Ella, and Cassandra and Al?’

‘Differently complicated. I’ve learned to just roll with it. The alternative is sleepless nights.’

‘You don’t usually sleep anyway.’

‘So not the point.’

Apparently Aneka’s message had caused something of a stir on Shadataga given that Aggy was carrying a lot of people and they had really had to hustle to get everything together so quickly. Drake and Shannon were on the flight deck when everyone disembarked from Gwy, but Gillian, Bashford, Monkey, and Delta were waiting in the reception hall, as were Winter and War.

‘You found her then?’ Gillian said as she stepped forward to give Ella a hug.

‘You found her, and trouble,’ Winter said.

‘You expected something else?’ Aneka replied, her tone bland.

‘No. It’s been a fairly quiet few decades, so we’re due some sort of disaster. Are you planning to introduce us to your new friend?’

‘Sure.’ Aneka looked up at the ceiling. ‘Drake, are we cloaked?’

‘Cloaked and moving in towards the inhabited region,’ Drake said from the hall’s speakers. ‘Aggy’s monitoring the comms traffic. All seems normal. No one spotted us.’

‘Thanks. Okay. This is Captain Anastasia Kade, pirate, currently assumed deceased. Ana, this is Gillian Gilroy, Leo Bashford, David Gibbons, Delta Ling, and these two are Winter and War. Somewhere upstairs are Drake, the captain, and Shannon Patton, and I doubt we’ll get much out of Aggy until she’s finished worrying over Gwy, but you’ll recognise her, she’s gold.’

‘You don’t mean precious, do you?’ Kade asked.

‘She has gold skin and silver eyes,’ Ella told her. ‘And she’s adorable.’

‘However,’ Winter went on, ‘we have a lot to discuss. Your message was brief, Aneka. We want details, and an explanation of the logistical requirements of this little operation.’

‘Up-to-date intelligence would be most useful too,’ War added. ‘In four hours we’re expecting to send a comms drone back with as much information as we can gather.’

‘We’d better get started then,’ Aneka replied.

Amethyst Hyde.

‘So,’ Drake said when Aneka was finished going over their plan, ‘all you want us to do is spirit everyone off Haven under the noses of the Pinnacle, to an as yet undetermined location where we will set them up in a new home?’

‘That about covers it,’ Aneka agreed.

‘Does it really sound that crazy compared to some of the things we’ve done?’ Ella asked.

‘No. Actually it sounds perfectly doable. We’ll need transports, but there are plenty of those. The problem is the concealment when you’re not sure who to conceal it from.’

‘Captain Drake is right,’ Winter said. ‘We’re going to need to identify
anyone
who could pose a threat to the security of the new site and exclude them.’

‘Possibly terminally,’ Aneka said, nodding. ‘I’ll sound out the Pinnacle woman tomorrow, but it’s this Captain Sorien I’m worried about, assuming he
is
the unknown spy.’

‘Can’t we hack his computers,’ Monkey suggested. ‘When he comes back we just get Aggy to infiltrate his ship’s systems. There’s bound to be something in there that will tell us one way or another.’

‘The Eye is ex-Pinnacle,’ Kade said. ‘It’s got excellent electronic warfare systems. Better than the Hope. Getting in from outside is going to be difficult.’

Aneka sighed. ‘I’ll get aboard and Al can go digging.’

‘Sorien likes tall women. Especially with black hair.’

‘I can do black hair, and it’ll be easier than going in cloaked. Any other preferences?’

‘Strong, which you’ve got covered. He likes them kind of slutty.’

‘Oh, Aneka can do slutty,’ Ella said, fighting to keep the smirk off her face.

Aneka gave her a smile and a little kiss on the cheek. ‘Thank you, dear. I had an excellent teacher.’

‘Hey!’

Pirate Cove, 7.1.560 FSC.

Ella scanned the selection of prostitutes awaiting their turn with a client as though undecided and very jaded. She let her gaze linger on a couple: a tall blonde woman and then a muscular, short-haired man who leered back at her a little too hopefully. Then she picked her glass up from the bar and walked over to the one red-haired woman in the room, naked aside from a collar.

‘You, come on.’

The slave looked up at her, nodded and got to her feet. ‘Please come with me. I am Lenora and I will be pleased to serve you in any way you wish.’