The Winter War

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘You’re mean,’ Ella pouted.

  ‘I am, yes,’ Aneka replied.

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  ‘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…

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  ‘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.

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  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.

  ‘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 ta
chyon 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.’

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  ‘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.’