The Winter War

The Winter
War

An Aneka Jansen Novel

By Niall Teasdale

Copyright 2014 Niall Teasdale

Smashwords Edition

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Contents

Part One: Yersinia
Pestis

Part Two: Home Is Where the Heart
Is

Part Three: Two Weddings and a
Party

Part Four: Tomb Raiders Wear
Shorts

Part Five: Winter

Part Six: The Sleep of Renewal

Part Seven: The Trial of Aneka
Jansen

Prime City,
Old Earth, 25.9.526 FSC, 11
^th
August 3186.

Aneka Jansen stood amidst her own past
and did not quite know what she should think or do. She was in the
small bedroom in what had been Yrimtan’s quarters in the Prime
City, and Yrimtan was her, or rather a duplicate of her, and this
room was an exact replica of the bedroom Aneka had had in her
parents’ house in Aldershot. That was back when she had been Human,
a millennium ago. Twelve centuries for the world and three years
for her.

‘Are you okay?’ Ella asked from
the doorway. Aneka turned and looked around at the beautiful
redhead who was looking concerned for her lover. Ella’s smile could
light up the room, but she was not smiling now and Aneka really
wanted her to.

‘I didn’t really look at this
room when I rescued you from it. It’s a bit of a shock to see
everything here, but… Actually, yeah, I’m good. I mean, in a way
this is great. All my stuff is here, even Lara and Bengy.’

Ella grinned. Aneka’s heart
lifted. Ella walked into the room and bent down beside the
bookcase, which was one of the few pieces of furniture. ‘So you
told me that the doll was Lara, though I never understood why…’ She
picked up a Sindy doll dressed in home-modified Action Man military
fatigues.

‘Lara Croft. She was a video
game character with huge boobs. She was a brunette, I think, but
still…’ Aneka grinned. ‘Actually, she was an archaeologist. Dye
your hair and dress you in some little shorts and you’re in.’

Ella giggled. She had had her
breasts enhanced in a misguided attempt to ensure that Aneka never
left her. It was misguided because Aneka was not going to, ever,
and if storming an underground city to rescue her did not prove it
then nothing was going to. ‘So Bengy is the bear?’

‘Uh-huh. Mum named him. I didn’t
do much aside from gurgle when they bought him for me. I can
remember her tucking me in with that bear when I was… two or
something.’

‘Vashma, I can’t remember
anything from when I was two.’

‘Well, you’re pushing eighty,
love, so it’s over twice as long ago. Besides, I don’t think I
could’ve remembered that before the Xinti digitised my memory. Now
there are holes where it was damaged, but if it’s still there I can
remember it perfectly. I’m a little glad I don’t seem to remember
being born.’

‘Do you want to take any of this
stuff back with you?’ Ella asked, straightening up.

Aneka looked around the room and
then plucked one framed photograph off the shelves. It showed three
people, one young man, one older, and a woman who looked a little
like an older version of Aneka, though she clearly shared traits
with them all. They were her brother, Alan, and her parents. ‘This.
It would be nice to have something to remind me of them.’

‘There’s one with all four of
you on the nightstand,’ Ella supplied, indicating the small table
beside the single bed.

Aneka wandered over and picked
up the picture. Sure enough, there she was, smiling at the camera
beside her tall father. Her brother and mother were sitting in
front; they were both a little shorter anyway. It was a posed shot,
that was clear. In it Aneka’s short mop of hair was a dirty blonde,
not the silver-white it was now, and her breasts were smaller and
rounder. The Xinti had built her a new body after dismantling the
old one for testing. Their intention had been to send her back to
Earth to observe the Human race so they had made a few
‘improvements,’ basing them on the idea that the ideal of beauty on
the internet was the norm. So her breasts had been enlarged and
made firmer and the white hair was supposed to be a unique and
startling feature.
Maybe I should be glad I didn’t end up
covered in tattoos.

‘No… I don’t particularly want
to be reminded of how I was changed,’ she said aloud. ‘Besides, a
family photo is one thing. I can just tell people they’re dead,
which is true even if it’s something of an understatement. Someone
might ask questions about the hair and boobs if they saw it.’

Ella shrugged. ‘I cut my hair
and let it go back to plain red, and my breasts are bigger than
they were a year ago, but I can understand you not wanting to be
reminded about
why
yours have changed.’

Aneka put the picture back on
the nightstand and started for the door, stopping once more at the
bookcase. She ran a finger along the shelf of real, physical, paper
books. ‘How she managed to keep these intact I don’t know. They
probably count as historical documents. The only place I’ve seen
printed books on New Earth is Abraham Wallace’s office.’

‘He likes paper,’ Ella agreed,
‘but then he is a little eccentric.’

‘It’s endearing. Huh,
The Art
of War
. I quoted it once to Bash and then said he’d probably
never get to read it.’

‘There is an electronic copy in
Aggy’s library,’ Al supplied, his voice sounding within Aneka’s
mind. Al was an artificial intelligence, her support AI residing on
a second computer in her chest. The first one, in her skull, ran
the software emulation of her mind.

‘I don’t think it’d be wise for
him to read that one,’ Ella said, unaware of Al’s comment. ‘Unless
she’s treated those books somehow, I’d imagine the paper is rather
fragile.’

‘Al says Aggy has a copy of
it.’

‘Huh, well it’s not like we’ve
been through everything Aggy has stored from your time.’ Aggy was
the computer on their ship. Technically she was the AI in the
computer on their ship, and she had performed the same role on the
ship which had kidnapped Aneka long ago. She had been transplanted
as a repair measure, but she had proven to be extremely useful, and
she had huge volumes of information on the world Aneka had come
from. ‘It could take us years to go through it all. I don’t think
we’ve even started on the books.’

Setting off for the door again,
Aneka said, ‘Let’s go back to the other bedroom. I’m feeling a
little freaked out in here.’

Ella grimaced. ‘Could we go to
her lounge?’

Aneka glanced back at her.
‘Feeling urges again?’

The grimace turned into a grin
that was very forced. ‘You know me, I always feel urges.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Okay, so now I’m
always
feeling urges and I don’t want to give in, and if we go to the
bedroom it’ll be really hard not to.’ Yrimtan, who had been the
ruler of the city they were in until Aneka had killed her, had
tortured Ella and Bashford, their colleague, using a device which
stimulated intense pain or pleasure. The pain hurt a hell of a lot,
but the pleasure was worse in some ways. For one thing, extended
use tended to result in the subject becoming addicted and they had
both been exposed extensively. Ella was naturally a very sexual
person; all the Jenlay were more or less, but Ella was on the more
side. Sex was, at best, a palliative for the longing she had, but
she was trying to use it as little as possible to get over the
addiction faster. Aneka was, if anything, more worried about
Bashford.

Walking out of the bedroom let
them out into a short corridor with a door at each end. The main
bedroom was off to the right so Aneka turned left and walked
through into a larger hallway which gave access to most of
Yrimtan’s slightly more public rooms. Off on the left were the
double doors to the audience chamber where she had died, and beyond
that was the way out to the rest of the city. To the right there
was one door Ella was keen to avoid because behind it was the room
she had been questioned in. There was a large bathroom back that
way too, but Aneka walked across and through a door into a quite
comfortable lounge.

As soon as Aneka walked into the
room the huge screen, which took up one five-metre wall, lit up
with various displays showing activity in this and the other two
cities left on the planet. Aneka frowned at the wall and then went
to slump into a large armchair. Another mildly annoying thing about
this place was that the city’s vast computer system insisted on
thinking that she was Yrimtan, or at least responding as though she
was. That had not gone unnoticed by the residents, the Citizens,
and they had started treating her like royalty almost immediately.
That was the main reason she was here rather than in a conference
room talking to the city’s Councillors; they kept deferring to her
rather than making decisions for themselves.

Ella did not give her a chance
to be disgruntled for long. She immediately sat down in Aneka’s lap
and laid her head down on the nearest shoulder.

‘You know,’ Aneka said, ‘this
computer thing has to be Yrimtan’s doing.’

‘How so?’

‘Well, when I came in here
before I killed her, nothing reacted like this. It started when we
went down to the computer room. I think she instructed the computer
to treat me as her if she didn’t survive.’

‘The more I think about it, the
more I think she was hoping you’d kill her.’

‘Maybe. She put up a helluva
fight for someone who wanted to die.’

‘She’d been alone for so long,
and she had all these contingency plans in case she did die…’ Ella
sat up straight and looked Aneka in the eyes. ‘When I die, you’ll
move on, right? You’ll find someone else?’

Aneka grinned. ‘When you die I’m
going to fly a shuttle into the nearest star, love.’

‘I’m serious.’

‘So am I.’

‘I don’t want you to kill
yourself over me. I’ve got maybe another two centuries in me, but
when I go… promise me you’ll move on. That’s what went wrong with
her. I think if she’d found someone else she could have got past
the feeling of betrayal and we’d be sitting here having drinks with
her.’

Aneka reached up to stroke
Ella’s cheek and Ella leaned into it, closing her eyes. ‘All right,
love. I promise.’

‘Thank you.’ Ella smiled, eyes
still closed, and Aneka felt like the sun had come out.

~~~

Gillian Gilroy looked pissed off and
very tired as she walked into the lounge and dropped into the seat
opposite Aneka and Ella. Like almost all Jenlay, Gillian was a
good-looking woman; Aneka had always thought she had a classical
look, like a Greek statue, but less matronly. She had dark olive
skin, brown eyes and hair, and her hair tended to hang in loose
ringlets which just made the classical features look right. She was
dressed in a fairly conservative, grey skirt suit she had
fabricated on the Garnet Hyde for the occasion. She was
intelligent, and she had what amounted to a lifetime of knowledge
and experience to work with in the areas of archaeology,
technological development, and history. She was patient, except
when waiting to get onto a dig site, and wise, and Aneka thought of
her a bit like an aunt; well, an aunt she sometimes went to bed
with, but still. Gillian Gilroy almost never swore.

‘She may have given them some
fucking reprogramming to get by on their own, but it wasn’t fucking
close
to enough. I swear she’s turned the Humans here into a
fucking bunch of fucking sheentoe.’

Ella burst into a fit of giggles
in Aneka’s lap. Aneka laughed and said, ‘I’m assuming me not being
there to make their decisions for them is not going so well?’

Gillian grumbled and then got
back up to walk over to the drinks cabinet in the corner of the
room. ‘Partially, I’m annoyed that Bash isn’t here to help, but no,
it’s not going well. I realise you’re uncomfortable with them
treating you like their Manu Dei, but if this keeps up I’m going to
get you in the meetings anyway. Maybe you can
force
them to
choose an option.’