The Winter War (11 page)

‘Yeah,’ Drake responded, ‘and if
anyone found out we were coming in
they’d
think we were due
in three days too.’

‘Huh. And you didn’t respond to
the broadcasts from Harriamon Control…’

‘Because we knew you’d come out
here to investigate an unknown vessel. We’re under orders to report
to the naval base for checking anyway.’

‘Underhanded, against
regulations, and a damn good plan. Bring the Hyde in to our hangar.
We’ve got the team of scouts aboard anyway. Winter figured the
belly of this beast was a good place to put you until we’ve got you
cleared. Handing you over to our flight control.’

‘Thank you, Captain. Hopefully
we’ll see you soon.’

FNb Admiral Banfry.

Soon was relative, but at least they
were not subject to the stringent quarantine provisions or the
security questions which they had been the last time they had come
back from uncharted space. Arriving in the early morning they had
had medical checks, which Aneka had been exempt from, and the
ship’s environment had been cleared for contaminants, and they were
meeting up with Ape and his executive officer, Commander Judith
Leeforth, in the conference room of the Banfry by early
afternoon.

Ape was a big man. Not
especially tall, no taller than Drake or Bashford anyway, he had a
barrel chest, broad hips, and a body covered in solid muscle. He
would have looked like an older version of his son, Monkey, if it
were not for the latter’s beard and mop of black hair. It was
pretty obvious that Ape’s baldness was a choice since there was
already a hint of stubble on his chin, and his scalp was suggesting
that it would need to be shaved sooner rather than later. When
Aneka had first met him he had been fairly overtly hostile to her,
but his displeasure over
what
she was had been assuaged by
what she
did.
Even he had to admit that, if she was some
sort of agent for the Xinti, she had saved the lives of his son and
ex-partner, and those of a lot of other people, more than once.
Right now he was looking very happy to see Gillian and Monkey, but
he was also looking tired; the hunt for the terrorists was taking
its toll.

Leeforth also looked tired. She
also looked many years his junior, though that meant next to
nothing. She was, of course, slim and attractive, but not very tall
and she lacked the kind of muscle definition Aneka saw in a lot of
military officers. She seemed an odd choice for an XO, not
especially authoritative, but Aneka could not see Ape playing
favourites even if, with her thick, shoulder-length, brown hair
tucked back behind her left ear, dark eyes, and milk chocolate
skin, she looked a bit like a younger Gillian. No, even if he was
sleeping with the girl, she had to be a better XO than she
looked.

‘I understand that I owe you for
getting Gillian out of trouble again, Miss Jansen?’ Ape said once
he had let his ex go.

‘Well, this time David pulled me
out of the wreckage in order to do it, so I figure it’s a fairly
even trade,’ Aneka replied.

‘Technically,’ Monkey said,
‘Delta carried you out with one broken arm while I covered you
both.’

Ape looked around at the tall
form of Delta. ‘Impressive, even if you have hooked up with a
giantess, son.’ Delta blushed. ‘All right,’ Ape went on, ‘we might
as well get down to business. I’m supposed to brief you on what’s
been happening since that message you got was sent off. Then I’d
imagine you’ll take a couple of days to get yourselves in order,
but they want you briefing the Administration back on New Earth as
soon as possible.’

‘Of course,’ Gillian said, ‘but
you’re looking tired, Tor.’ She glanced at Leeforth. ‘You both
are.’

‘It’s this terrorist thing.
We’ll get to that. In fact, let’s deal with that first since Winter
asked me to brief you. Judy, would you do the honours?’

As everyone sat down, Leeforth’s
fingers tapped over the tablet she was holding and one wall of the
room became a screen. It was showing a schematic of a spaceship,
blocky and rather ugly, with a front section which featured a
chunky circular cross-section and a pair of heavy-looking engine
nacelles at the rear. There was also a fairly large gun port in the
nose which Aneka figured was a spinal mount; a very heavy piece of
weaponry.

‘We don’t have full details on
these things,’ Leeforth said. She had a fairly soft voice, easy on
the ears. ‘The primary armament we’re pretty sure is a graser, and
we think it’s using antimatter torch engines. The hull armour
signature came back as unidentifiable until we checked it against
the data you got in Negral. It’s definitely using a collapsed
matter material as the outer layer so we suspect a Xinti origin,
but…’

‘The Xinti wouldn’t use reaction
engines,’ Gillian said.

‘Yes, ma’am. Their reactionless
drives were far more efficient, even in the war. A thousand years
on… Who knows, but it seems unlikely they’d go back to older
tech.’

‘The ring cross-section
forward,’ Drake said, ‘you’re thinking that’s the warp drive?’

‘Yes, sir. It’s overly large,
which may suggest a lot of speed. We’ve no confirmation on
performance characteristics. They
definitely
have some form
of cloaking system. They vanish off the sensors, and come out of
nowhere to begin with.’

‘Which is more Xinti tech, but
don’t you think this looks more like someone using cobbled
together, badly understood technology where they can rather than
the original creators of the tech?’

Leeforth opened her mouth,
apparently thought about what she was going to say, and looked to
Ape. ‘You can speak freely here, Commander,’ the Captain told
her.

Nodding, Leeforth said, ‘I agree
with you, Captain Drake. The official line from the Admiralty is
that the ship has design characteristics which suggest a Xinti
origin. We’ve had reports of attacks on Torem and Herosian
shipping, and the Herosians have reported some intercepted comm
traffic which they think is encrypted Xinti.’

‘I don’t suppose they’ve
released that data to the Navy?’ Aneka asked. ‘Between Al and Aggy
we should be able to break the encryption.’

‘You’ll need to ask your
enigmatic friend about that,’ Ape said. ‘That’s above our pay
grade. We did, however, think it might be useful to have your
computer, or both of them, look over the sensor data. Maybe they
can see something which will identify it one way or another.’

‘You’re willing to let a couple
of Xinti AIs help you?’

‘Miss Jansen, right now if a
Xinti War Leader walked through that door in a full combat body and
offered his assistance, I’d take it! You said we looked tired,
Gillian? Well this is about the first break we’ve had from patrol
since you left for Old Earth. So, yes, I’ll take all the help I can
get.’

Aneka nodded and looked at
Leeforth. ‘Send the files across to the Hyde. Aggy will take a look
as soon as possible.’

‘All right,’ Ape said. ‘We’ve
been waiting on you getting back to give final approval on the next
phase of talks with Old Earth. We’ve got a package ready to send
over with the plans the Negral AIs gave us for that souped-up
tachyon communication system of theirs. Even with that the range
between the two Earths is too great to go direct, so they want to
build a relay here. They tell me that it’ll give us a six-day round
trip for a message instead of one generation sending the message
and the next getting the reply.’

Gillian laughed. ‘It’s not that
bad, but the shorter interval would be useful. Why do we need to
give approval?’

‘Just making sure you still
thought the same way now as before, I assume.’

‘We do, I think.’ No one said
anything against the idea so she nodded and said, ‘We do. That comm
system is advanced, even for them. It may take them some time to
build it.’

‘Quite possibly, but our
estimates suggest that it’ll be up and running before you get to
New Earth. I was told to say that if you have any briefing material
you wanted to add to your previous data you should send it
ahead.’

‘I doubt there’s anything much.
I’ll review the report we sent and amend as necessary. As you said,
it would be nice to have a few days’ rest before moving on. How is
this all going down with the Administration?’

Ape gave a short, mirthless
laugh. ‘You think they’d tell me? I get the feeling they’re all
wrapped up in the details, mostly the problems. The press were told
and they’re playing it up as the greatest discovery ever. As far as
I know, the Herosians and Torem have no comment. It’s not really
anything to do with them.’

‘I guess we’ll just have to see
how it goes then.’

‘Any instructions on dealing
with the press?’ Drake asked.

‘You’ve no comment until you get
back to New Earth,’ Ape replied. ‘There are a few reporters about
the station, possibly some on the planet, so watch your step.’

Harriamon Naval Station, 24.1.527
FSC.

‘Urgent message delivery for Ella
Narrows,’ the computer announced in a flat monotone which did not
sound especially urgent.

Frowning, Ella sat up in bed and
looked at the terminal at the side of the room they had been
assigned aboard the naval station. ‘Aggy would have said that with
a better tone. I don’t feel especially energised to find out what
it says.’

Still lying back on the bed,
Aneka chuckled. ‘You best take a look. Maybe it’s from your
mother.’

‘Huh, yeah, true.’ Ella slipped
out of the bed and stepped over to the console. ‘Though I don’t
think she’d disturb me during sex.’

‘She sent it days ago. I don’t
think she could’ve known…’

‘This is my mother we’re talking
about. She’d…’ Ella stopped suddenly and Aneka pushed herself up
onto her elbows, frowning.

‘Ella?’

‘It’s, uh, from my father.’

‘Brinna? How did he know we were
here?’

‘Saw it on the local news
channel. “Ship returns from Old Earth.” “Crew responsible for
discovering Negral uncover life on Earth.” That kind of thing. He
saw my picture…’

‘Oh. Well, what does he
want?’

‘He wants to see me, tomorrow.
Says he’ll meet me in one of the clubs, Yashi’s, in Cavern
One.’

‘You’re not exactly sounding
positive about this.’

‘I’ve barely spoken to him since
we left Harriamon. I wasn’t even sure he was still here. I think he
talks to Mom sometimes, but she tends to avoid telling me.’

‘Why?’

Ella deleted the message on the
screen and turned around. ‘Because whenever he gets in contact it’s
because he wants something.’

Harriamon, 25.1.527 FSC.

Yashi’s was a fairly typical sort of
structure for the kind of building you found in Cavern One. The
whole place was what could best be described as the social hub of
Harriamon’s one and only town, if it could be said to have one at
all. The atmosphere of the planet was a delightful mix of nitrogen,
carbon dioxide, and various sulphur compounds, all at one-point-two
atmospheres and nearly a thousand Kelvin. As a result of that the
town was constructed in caverns under the surface with a couple of
domed habitation areas on top. It was a mining town, out on the
Rim, and it looked it.

In this case, the building
seemed to have been constructed half in the wall of the cavern.
What was visible was a single storey sprayed over in dirt-brown
Plascrete which made it look stuccoed. There was a single door and
no windows, and a glowing sign that read ‘Live Dancers!’ Aneka
assumed that meant that some of the other clubs hidden away at the
back of the cavern used robots.

‘This is the place?’ Aneka asked
as they walked toward it. She was not entirely sure why Ella had
insisted that they wear ‘suitable clubbing outfits’ since Yashi’s
did not look like somewhere she would want to be seen dead in
and
they were meeting her father, but she had, so they were.
Aneka was dressed up in a basque, short skirt, and heels; Ella was
in a shorter skirt, halter top, and higher heels.

‘Yeah. It figures the bastard
would want to meet here.’

‘Why?’

‘This is where Mom used to
work.’

The inside was not much better
than the outside. The lighting was dim, which probably helped to
avoid questions about the stains on the Plascrete floor. It was
basically one, big open room, as far as Aneka could see, with
circular tables scattered about it, a couple of booths at the back,
and a long bar on the right side. About midway down the bar was a
pole with an extremely bored-looking blonde with breasts large
enough for it to look entirely unnatural swinging around it. There
were three waitresses Aneka could see working the floor, all of
them naked aside from thongs, which barely deserved the term, or
maybe exemplified it, and high-heeled, platform pumps.

‘Just avoid the dressed ones
working the tables,’ Ella said. ‘There are private dance rooms at
the back, except that they do their best to persuade you to pay for
extra.’

Aneka spotted three women and a
man moving between the tables. At least it was relatively equal
opportunity prostitution. They were dressed, more or less. There
was a lot of sheer material and very tight Ultraskin. ‘Can you see
your Dad?’

‘He’s probably at the back.
There’s a little more privacy there.’

There was a man sitting in one
of the back booths alone. Alone aside from the blonde in the
strappy, semi-transparent top and micro-skirt who was standing at
his table anyway. He looked the part of a man with a daughter in
her late twenties, slightly balding, a little overweight, starting
to wrinkle around the eyes. Of course Ella was actually in her
seventies and there was no real reason for him to look his age. The
only thing Ella seemed to have inherited from the man was her hair;
her mother was a brunette, her father’s hair was ginger. Otherwise
he looked like a good-looking man who had let himself go; not a
common sight in Federal culture. Brinna Techman, Ella’s father.
Aneka really could not see the resemblance.