The Winter War (10 page)

‘How are you feeling?’ Aneka
asked.

‘This thing is very… tight,’
Abigail replied. ‘Aside from that I’m just excited.’

Aneka chuckled. ‘It’s tight
because it keeps your body from trying to expand if the air goes.’
She checked her altitude and then shifted her hand over the slider
which powered up the main engines. ‘Hold on, here we go.’

There were light clouds in the
sky above them and suddenly they were rushing up to meet them. Then
they were gone and there was nothing but blue sky around them,
which slowly began to darken into black.

‘Oh… wow,’ Abigail breathed as,
in the middle of the day, the stars began to come out overhead. She
looked off to the left. ‘The rings look prettier from here.’

Aneka glanced that way seeing
the thin plane of debris. It was all shattered satellites left over
from the war. The Xinti had made sure nothing in orbit survived,
cutting off communication to the planet. She set up the orbital
insertion to be well within them and then rolled the shuttle over
so that they could look up at the planet’s surface. After a couple
of minutes the main engines cut off and they were left in near
silence with the world gliding past above them.

‘Everything looks so small from
up here,’ Abigail said, ‘but big at the same time. I mean, I hardly
ever go far from town. Going down to Prime City was the furthest
I’ve ever been, until now. It’s such a big world and I only know a
tiny part of it.’

‘Maybe you’ll see more of it,’
Ella said. She got up and stepped forward to get a better view.
‘Councillor Marsden has a lot of plans about getting better
education and technology out into the surface towns. She mentioned
you, and Mei, as possible pilot students.’

‘Me? Why?’

‘You’re used to dealing with
Citizens. They’re trying to change, but the first few students will
be teaching them as much as they learn. You impressed her. You’ve
got courage. You’re not afraid to stand up to them if you need to.
They’re going to need that to make this work. It’s up to you,
obviously. It would mean moving away from home for at least some of
the time. But I think you should consider it carefully.’

‘But what would I learn? I don’t
know anything aside from singing and how to keep a house.’

‘I don’t honestly know,
Abigail,’ Ella replied, grinning down at her, ‘but won’t it be
amazing fun finding out?’

FScV Garnet Hyde, 20.11.526 FSC.

Aneka sat in the lab watching Earth
recede in the rear sensors. She had rather mixed feelings. That was
her home she was leaving, maybe never to return. On the other hand,
she was going home and leaving a world she had no real attachment
to behind. This was not
her
Earth, but neither was the one
she was now en route to. The picture vanished, replaced by a star
field; they had shifted into warp. Aneka gave a little shrug and
turned to her companions.

Everyone was staying up for the
short trip to Harriamon. Gillian and Ella, with some help from
Aneka, were going to spend the time going over everything they had
on Old Earth as it was now compared to what they knew about it
before the war. Everyone else was just happy to avoid cold sleep,
though Bashford had decided they might as well go through the
equipment checking for faults. Aneka suspected that, once their
flight plan was set, Shannon would be making sure Drake did not
leave the cabin aside from routine checks.

‘Regretting leaving, or in a
rush to get home?’ Ella asked.

‘We go as fast as we go,’ Aneka
replied, ‘and that’s not my home anymore. But… I kind of feel like
I’m stepping away from an obligation.’

‘You’re one woman, you can’t
change the world.’

‘Yrimtan did.’

‘And look where that got her.
They need to change themselves, and you gave them a good
start.’

Aneka nodded, slowly. ‘
We
gave them a good start.’

Ella grinned. ‘I’ll accept that.
I think I’m looking forward to getting home though.’

‘You just want to organise an
orgy with Kat and Dillon.’

‘It’s not just that!’

‘I notice you’re not denying
it.’

‘No, my libido’s totally off the
chart. I’m quite aware of it and I can let it go there, but… um… I
really need to cut back on this because… I don’t want to screw up
again.’

‘You won’t,’ Aneka replied
lightly.

‘But I might…’

Aneka lifted a hand, stroking it
down Ella’s cheek. The redhead’s eyes closed and a small shudder
ran through her body. ‘You won’t.’

‘If you two want to take the
rest of the day off I won’t mind,’ Gillian said, a hint of humour
in her voice.

Aneka let Ella go. ‘No, I think
we should get on with the work. Ella’s always more enthusiastic
when she’s had time to wind herself up.’

‘You’re mean,’ Ella pouted.

‘I am, yes,’ Aneka replied.

29.12.526 FSC.

‘Come in, Aneka.’ The door slid open to
reveal Shannon standing in the doorway to her bathroom cubicle,
rubbing a towel through her long, blonde hair.

‘How did you know it was me?’
Aneka asked as she stepped into the room.

‘Couldn’t hear anyone’s mind
when the door chimed.’ Dropping the towel back onto the rail,
Shannon padded across the metal floor and lay herself out on the
bottom bunk, not bothering to get dressed.

‘Huh. Drake asked me to come
down and see if there was anything you wanted.’

‘I’m fine. I’ve eaten. I’ve got
a glass of wine I’m going to drink, and then I’m going to get some
sleep.’

Aneka smiled. ‘I think our
Captain was missing you already.’

‘Drake’s a soppy bastard at
times, but I needed a break from everyone’s thoughts. It’ll be the
Renewal and First Day tomorrow night, people get a bit emotional. I
wanted to be all calm and ready for it.’

‘You seem pretty calm anyway.
Your telepathy’s back under control?’

Shannon gave a little shrug
which made her large breasts bounce. ‘As in control as it ever was.
I think it went haywire because I’d lost confidence in myself
after… Well, after Quint. Dodging those missiles, taking the risk
and having it pay off, and the praise Drake gave me afterward. All
that gave me the kick I needed. That’s my opinion anyway. After
that the whispering I hear from
everyone
went back to
tolerable levels.’

‘Well, I’m glad we’ve got you
back properly now.’

‘You haven’t. It’s… Vashma, how
do I explain this? I know how you must have felt. When you first
woke up in the containment room in the lab with no real memory of
who you were, and then it started trickling back… Quint erased my
mind, and the doctors put it back, but I feel like there are bits
of me missing. Drake says he hasn’t noticed anything, and I know
he’s not lying to save my feelings, but I still feel like… Like I’m
an imposter occupying Shannon Patton’s body.’

Aneka stepped around the room’s
small table and sat down. ‘Yeah, that’s how I felt.’

‘How do you deal with it?’

‘I’ve got Ella. She says that it
doesn’t matter who I was.
This
is who I am. I’m me, even if
I’m not exactly what Aneka Jansen used to be; I’m the one who
exists. And she’s right. This is me, for good or bad.’

‘But what if I’ve lost something
important?’

‘If Drake hasn’t noticed
anything, then I doubt it. Have
you
noticed anything
odd?’

Shannon shook her head. ‘Then
again, how would I know?’

‘Other people. Maybe they react
in a way you don’t expect or seem surprised at something you
did?’

‘Nothing like that.’

‘Then you’re being paranoid. And
I can understand that, believe me, but that’s all it is and you’ll
get over it. I have.’

The blonde grinned. ‘I should
have thought of talking to you about this months ago.’

Aneka grinned back. ‘I doubt you
would have really listened until after the missile attack, and
since then we’ve been kind of busy.’

The grin became a little sly.
‘You’re right. I’ve barely seen you the last couple of months.’
Reaching over her head, she tapped a pad on the headboard. ‘Patton
to Narrows. Ella, I need some uncomplicated entanglement in a quiet
room. Can I borrow Aneka for an hour?’

Ella’s voice came back almost
immediately, sounding tired. ‘I’m puzzling over some statistics for
Gillian. Take two. Just make sure you haven’t worn her out. I’m
going to need her after this.’

‘Don’t I get a say in the
matter?’ Aneka asked.

‘No.’ It came from the speakers
and Shannon at the same time.

Well that’s me told then.

~~~

‘Oo ’oke I ’ung!’

Ella giggled. ‘Sorry?’

‘Oo ’oke I ’ung!’ Aneka tried
again.

‘Oh! I broke your tongue?’

‘Esh!’

‘Well why didn’t you just say
that?’ Ella began untying Aneka from the table. She had her wrists
setae-stripped to the corners of the widest edge and her ankles
taped to the legs. It had given her unrestricted access to Aneka’s
face, which she had been enjoying for quite a while. She was
pointedly
not
checking the time on the clock in the corner
of her vision so that she could tell herself it was not as
long.

‘Oo ’ished ’inner,’ Aneka
lisped. She was busy ignoring the diagnostic displays that were
currently telling her about the repair work being done in the
artificial muscle fibres which made up her tongue. She had honestly
thought it was impossible for her to suffer from what amounted to
repetitive strain injury, especially there!

‘Well now you know,’ Al
commented, and then wisely shut up. Aneka just
knew
Cassandra, his girlfriend, was going to hear about this one.

‘Dinner? Yeah, I know. I was
snacking all day to keep my blood sugar up while I was working.’
With the high-tensile tape removed from Aneka’s wrists, she moved
around behind, crouching down to apply the small device that
controlled the nanofibre bonding mechanism to the tape. ‘If I’m
hungry I’ll just…’

Aneka was wondering what the end
of the sentence was going to be when Ella’s tongue began lapping at
her labia. ‘Nnnngg!’ she said.

‘What? I feel like another
snack.’ The tongue went back to work, finding Aneka’s clitoris
quickly.

Aneka closed her eyes. With her
ankles still taped to the table there was nothing she could do
about it, and after two hours of pleasing Ella she was in desperate
need of release herself. It came fairly quickly; a normal woman
might have been fatigued by all that licking, but Aneka was just
wound up. She felt her muscles tightening, her stomach began to
flutter, and then there was nothing but light.

A few seconds later, as she came
down, she realised that Ella was not going to stop…

30.12.526 FSC.

‘It serves you right,’ Aneka said,
trying really hard to keep the grin off her face.

‘Ish no’ funny,’ Ella replied,
pouting.

‘You’re just lucky my systems
repaired mine, or you’d be looking for someone else to say the
Renewal.’

‘Over-employing your linguistic
skills last night, Ella?’ Gillian asked. She was apparently
concentrating on her console, but you could hear the laugh in her
voice.

‘Ish no’ funny!’ Ella
responded.

‘You’re hardly the first. I had
a fling with a girl in university and the both of us were talking
like that for a week.’ Gillian gave a sigh. ‘My first girl,
actually. Hers too. We got a little over-enthusiastic.’ She
laughed. ‘Now, when they were re-engineering our sex organs, why
didn’t someone give us stronger tongues?’

‘Oo righ’!’ Ella agreed. Aneka
just giggled.

1.1.527 FSC (but only just).

‘As this old year turns and the new one
begins, we give thanks for all that has been, and look forward to
all that is to come. The Long Dark is gone and we look into the
light. Let this First Day be the first of many where we strive to
be the best we can be and fight to keep the darkness at bay.’

Aneka finished the little
speech, raised her glass to meet those the others were holding once
more, and then took a drink. There was silence for a long moment
and Aneka looked around at the solemn faces. Somehow they seemed
more subdued than usual, and she noticed tears almost flooding down
Shannon’s face.

‘Are you okay, Shannon?’

‘It’s a bit overwhelming. I’ve
got my own feelings on top of everyone else’s. The Renewal, and we
were on Old Earth a few weeks ago…’

‘Yes,’ Gillian said. ‘That was
what I was thinking.’ There was a murmur of agreement from everyone
else.

‘And that’s why I needed last
night to be ready,’ Shannon said.

‘Sorry, love,’ Drake said.
‘We’ll try to think of something else.’

‘No, it’s okay. It’s like… It’s
kind of solemn, but it’s happy too.’ She laughed, tears still
falling. ‘I guess we found the home of the Human race. That’s bound
to be a mixed emotions sort of thing.’

Aneka gave her a smile. The girl
from Old Earth was probably the only one not feeling the moment.
The Renewal meant less to her than it did to them. It was a pretty
major part of their culture, an affirmation of the ideals of the
Lorenti Federation. She was not really much of a singer, but she
opened her mouth and sang anyway.

‘Should old acquaintance be
forgot, and never brought to mind? Should old acquaintance be
forgot, for the sake of Auld Lang Syne? For Auld Lang Syne, my
dear, for Auld Lang Syne, we’ll take a cup of kindness yet, for
Auld Lang Syne.’

And then she started crying
too.

23.1.527 FSC.

The vast bulk of the FNb Admiral Banfry
glided smoothly through the space ahead of them. There were four
frigates escorting her and a couple of destroyers sweeping around
on her flanks. The Navy really did mean business.

‘We weren’t expecting you for
another three days, Captain Drake.’ Captain Ape Gibbons sounded a
little accusing, even over the radio.