Ella looked up as the door closed behind Winter. ‘Oh, it’s you.’ She obviously saw the look on the spy mistress’ face and decided to try for a joke to cover her disquiet. ‘Dillon’s downstairs, you know?’
Winter smiled, which was an improvement. ‘I was thinking that as I put this outfit on. I have very fond memories of that young man and this suit.’ She walked into the middle of the room, between the couches that formed the ‘entertainment area.’ ‘Frankly, I haven’t had as much plain fun in a while.’ She bent at the hips, placing the bag she was carrying on the carpet and then unzipping it to reveal a cylindrical device which she placed on one end before activating it.
Then she straightened up and said something, and Aneka heard nothing. Frowning, she stepped closer and her ears filled with a sudden, sharp, ultrasonic whine.
‘…should stop anyone outside this room hearing anything we say,’ Winter was saying.
‘Some sort of high-tech anti-bug screen?’ Aneka asked. ‘I think I nearly blew my ears out when I walked through it.’
‘Sorry, I should have told you to come inside the screen range. It uses ultrasonic resonance to generate a band of stable air. Sound can’t get in or out.’
‘And we need this because?’ Ella asked.
‘Because I need to ask you to do something for me and I need it to be secret. Which is why I’m not here; I’m currently quite visibly attending a meeting in the Islands…’
‘We’d worked out you had doubles,’ Ella said. ‘You were somewhere else when you were at the party.’
Winter smiled. ‘Being in two places at once can be useful at times. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t make it general knowledge. Anyway, this meeting is not taking place and I’m not asking you to do this, and I’m stating now that you have the right to tell me you won’t.’
‘I think we’d better hear what it is before we give an answer,’ Aneka said. She stepped down into the entertainment area and sat down beside Ella. Winter always asked when she wanted something done, but she had never stated up front that they could decline.
‘All right, let me tell you a story…’
‘This sounds like it could be long,’ Ella said, ‘and those heels are very high. Sit down.’
Giving Ella a smile, Winter started for one of the other couches. ‘About seventy years ago, four-sixty actually, there were some rumours about a mercenary group entering Jenlay space.’ She perched on the edge of the seat and began to take off her shoes; maybe they were too high. ‘The Agency investigated because the group had something of a reputation. The Ashad Hithor. You may have heard of them, Ella?’
‘I know the name. Herosians?’
‘Herosians and Jenlay, but they were founded by a Herosian and his family still runs it. At the time the rumours could not be substantiated, but it was thought that they were sent in to retrieve something. Recently, as part of the investigation into the terrorist attacks on shipping, I reopened that investigation.’
‘Reopening a seventy-year-old investigation?’ Aneka said. ‘That’s… reaching a long way for answers.’
‘I have a theory on the source of the attacks and this forms part of the pattern. I’ve managed to track down evidence over the last several months that the most likely system they were headed for is G-two-five-six-one. There is one habitable world in the system, which gives it the “G” classification, but it’s barely habitable. Barely twenty per cent surface water, an average of three hundred and twenty Kelvin. Most of it is desert, though it does have indigenous life.’
‘I know that system. It’s in the list of Xinti uplift sites. They called it Idridia.’
‘Interesting. Do you have any indication of what the Xinti did there?’
As soon as she asked, Al began displaying the data from the Negral database in Aneka’s vision field. ‘Uh… There was an indigenous, pre-spaceflight, sentient race. They attempted to accelerate their technology. And they were successful to some extent.’
‘To some extent?’
‘The Idridians blew themselves apart a few years after discovering nuclear weapons.’
‘Ah. There has only ever been a basic survey of Idridia. No indication of any civilisation.’
‘The experiment was… thirteen centuries ago. Add a nuclear war, there may be little indication that there was any civilisation there.’
‘Especially on a basic survey,’ Ella agreed. ‘It would be a fascinating place to study.’
‘I’m glad you think so,’ Winter said, ‘because I need someone to go there and see if they can find out what these mercenaries were looking for.’
‘Just the two of us?’
Winter nodded. ‘I’m having the software on the Pegasus refitted to make it more useful for a survey mission. It can only handle a complement of two, and I want this kept as quiet as possible. Your flight plan would indicate that you were taking the ship to Harriamon on a test run. You come back and report directly to me. No communication while you’re out of the system.’
‘This wouldn’t be my first covert op,’ Aneka said.
‘No, but I’m saying this for Ella’s benefit. She needs to understand what she’s getting into. Officially this operation does not exist. There’s no backup.’
‘Oh,’ Ella said. Then she grinned. ‘But I’ve got Aneka so I don’t need backup.’
Winter smiled back. ‘That may be true, but we’ll be sending you out with the latest portable kit, just in case. I’m not really expecting any trouble, but you never can tell until it happens. If you agree, then you leave the day after tomorrow.’
Ella’s face fell. ‘What about the university? Gillian’s really busy and I’m…’
‘I’ve arranged for cover, if you accept, of course.’
Ella looked toward Aneka. Aneka nodded and turned to Winter. ‘Aside from anything else, Ella might hurt me if she didn’t get to go see a potential new archaeological site.’
Winter got to her feet and started toward the sonic screen gadget. ‘I’ll make the final arrangements,’ she said as she bent over in front of them.
Ella grinned at the view. ‘You will stop off downstairs before you leave, won’t you? Dillon and Kat would be most disappointed if they missed you.’
Winter looked back at her, and actually blushed.
FScV Pegasus, 23.6.527 FSC.
‘Federal Science Vessel Pegasus to New Earth Control, requesting clearance for warp.’ Aneka’s hands were on the twin joysticks that controlled the sub-light flight as they headed out from the station where they had embarked onto the streamlined beauty that was the Pegasus. It was an experimental design using a second-generation warp engine. The idea had been to produce a faster frigate, but the power requirements were currently too great. There was nowhere to put weapons systems. It was still a thing of beauty.
‘New Earth Control here, Pegasus you are cleared through to Harriamon. Have a good flight.’
Aneka tapped a switch to close the connection, and then another to activate the internal comms. ‘Ella, warp in ten seconds.’
‘Good. I want to be out of the system so we can cut this secret mission gopi.’
Grinning, Aneka checked the flight parameters appearing on one of the displays on her right and hit the button on her joystick, which transitioned the ship into warp. The ultrasonic howl of the twin antimatter torch engines died away as the stars blurred and then vanished in front of her. A second later the computer compensated, projecting a virtual version of the star field to replace the one that had now blue-shifted into gamma rays.
She checked the navigation computer again. Flight parameters were locked in, everything was looking good. ‘Al, keep an eye on her for me.’
‘Of course, Aneka,’ the computer replied.
Aneka slid back the flight chair and climbed out, heading back through the ship to its only other room, a fairly well-appointed cabin, where Ella was going over the equipment Winter had supplied.
‘Well, we’ve got enough kit here to do basic field work in
style,’ Ella said. ‘There’s a lab-in-a-box, a couple of hand analysers, various multi-mode sensors, a chemsniffer, and a lidar unit, which looks military grade. There’s a bag there with climbing equipment, a box of those light-emitting microbots, and another one which seems to be an explorer system. I’m on survival rations. You’ll probably want to skip those.’
‘I think I might, yeah.’ Sometimes not having to eat was a godsend.
‘Uh, that gadget over there that’s taking up way too much space is a fusion torch. Nothing much is going to get in our way with that handy. Oh…’ She reached out and picked up a silver suitcase. ‘…and this little beauty is an Automed. Basically it’s a robot doctor. If I’m hurt, you just put this over me, activate it, and it should do everything aside from raising me from the dead.’
‘Yes, well let’s try to avoid needing it. Winter didn’t think there’d be anything to worry about where we’re going.’
‘Yeah, but it’s nice to know we’ve got it. What’s our flight time?’
‘Sixteen days, give or take.’
Ella giggled. ‘Sixteen days with nothing to do. It’s a second… What did you call it? Honeymoon?’
Aneka shrugged. With equipment taking up half the floor of the cabin they were going to be spending a lot of time on the bed anyway. ‘Just for propriety, let’s wait until we’re a few light minutes out of the system before we take our clothes off.’
25.6.527 FSC.
‘You know, there is something a little odd about the data on Idridia,’ Aneka said.
Ella’s voice was a little muffled by her mouth’s current position pressed to the side of Aneka’s right breast. ‘Odd? Wha’ kin’ of odd?’ It was not that they were up to anything, it was just that they could both work lying down and that was where Ella had ended up. She was currently going over the data from the uplift database on Idridia, as was Aneka.
‘Well, there’s no follow-up data. The other failed sites have data collected after they fucked the planet up one way or another. The ones where they succeeded, the data collection continues until the war. Idridia there’s a report of the natives launching missiles, and then it stops.’
‘So, wha’re you finkin’?’
Aneka giggled. ‘For God’s sake get your nose out of my boob. You sound like a boxer. I’m thinking that Negral sent a ship out to survey the planet and something happened to it. It wouldn’t be the first time a science ship ended up broken on a planet’s surface.’
Ella rolled onto her back. ‘So you’re thinking that this bunch of mercs were after that Xinti ship?’
‘Or parts of it.’
‘Either way it gives us some search parameters. There’s common use of collapsed matter and various hyper-dense plastics in their spaceship hulls which are unlikely to be found normally on a planetary surface. And if it crashed there’s bound to be some debris, even if these mercs took the bulk of it away.’
Aneka nodded. ‘Wasn’t there something about exotic matter being used in the reactionless drive?’
‘Uh… yes. We should have the sensor data from the Agroa Gar. If there was a release then we might be able to pick up the residual radiation. If the drive’s intact then… I’m not sure, actually, but we can see what we can find out.’
‘Huh,’ Aneka said, grinning and turning on her side, one arm draping across Ella’s stomach, ‘we actually have a plan. The start of a plan anyway. I honestly thought we’d roll up to this place with no clue what to look for.’
‘Instead of which we may have some vague idea of what to look for.’
‘You’re usually the optimist in this relationship.’
‘Well, you’re being optimistic and someone’s got to inject a note of realism.’
Aneka laughed. ‘I wasn’t exactly being optimistic. It was more like our chances have gone from nil to some and I was celebrating the fact.’
‘Oh. In that case, we’re going to sweep in there, spot the ship on the first fly-by, swoop in, find vital information that Winter can’t do without, and be heroes of the galaxy.’ Aneka looked at her. ‘Too much?’
‘Maybe a little.’
11.7.527 FSC.
‘Okay, so locating the ship on the first pass was maybe a little over-optimistic,’ Ella said. She was sitting in the pilot’s seat with the displays configured almost purely for sensor operation.
‘Maybe a little,’ Aneka agreed. She was leaning on the back of the chair monitoring the window on the right which gave orbital trajectory and other flight parameters. She could have done it remotely from the cabin, but where was the fun in that.
They had arrived at Idridia two days earlier, put the ship into a trans-polar orbit, and started mapping. The first day had been spent doing topographical scans, at high resolution since they already had the low-resolution survey data from the previous scouting mission. Now they were going back over the planet with everything they could muster.
‘What do we do if we can’t find anything significant?’ Ella asked.
‘We check out those areas of refined metal we discovered.’
‘There are several hundred of those, Aneka.’
‘Yeah, but we can probably discount some of them.’
‘Such as?’
Aneka leaned forward, tapping a map display and spinning the virtual globe on it around, then zooming in on one area. ‘Such as that one. See how there are discrete chunks? And there are several mounted up high on this curved ridge with a clump below in the valley?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘That’s what they call a kill zone. Classical tank battle tactics. The ones in the valley were stupid to walk into it.’ She zoomed out, turned the map again, and narrowed the focus once more. ‘This one is more promising. Radiation signature with a conical scatter pattern…’
‘High-speed, low-angle impact,’ Ella continued. ‘But it’s all light alloys, barely spacecraft grade. That’s probably a nuclear bomber that crashed.’
Aneka grinned and kissed Ella on the cheek. ‘Fair enough, but we can narrow it down like that.’
‘Okay, no need to get despondent yet then. We could still…’ She stopped, her hands reaching forward to tap at a display. ‘Now that’s interesting.’
‘What’s that?’
‘That is a gravimetric distortion. Could be the result of unusually dense rock strata under the sight…’
‘But it could be from a hull with a collapsed-matter outer layer?’
‘Uh-huh… I say we finish this sweep and then go back for a closer look if we don’t find anything better.’
‘You’re the scientist, love.’
~~~
Nothing had come up as a better target, at least for a possible Xinti crash site. The detailed topographical scan suggested that there was some sort of structure there: a fortress of some sort, or at least a defensible outpost.
‘How did they not see that in the original scans?’ Aneka asked as she switched places with Ella.
‘There’s a lot of sand built up around the buildings. Quite a lot of weathering too. In a low-res scan it would look like small hills.’
‘Huh, well aside from those two big mountains there’s not much in the way of big hills on this sand trap.’
‘It’s got practically no seismic activity. No tectonics, no volcanism. I doubt it’s been active in a few hundred thousand years, maybe longer. Those mountains are old volcanos. Everything else has been weathered down to hillocks. You saw that sand storm in the southern hemisphere yesterday…’
‘Yeah. Not something I’d want to get caught in. Okay, prepare for de-orbit.’ Taking the controls, Aneka spun the ship on its vertical axis and fired the main engines. As they began to drop she cut in the anti-gravity systems, turned the nose down, and pushed the ship down into the atmosphere as though the planet was not there. Two hundred metres above the surface she pulled the nose up and began powering toward their target. ‘I love anti-grav.’
Ella let out a little squeak in response.
The towers of t
he outpost seemed far more obvious at a low angle. The structure looked like it had been built into the rock, which had probably been above the sand before a few centuries of wind and no maintenance had smothered a lot of it. Close up the sensors were registering a high wall, probably a form of aggregate, under the sand.
‘I’ll put her down outside the fort,’ Aneka said. ‘We’ll take the climbing gear in case we need to drop down on the inside.’
Ella nodded. ‘You’re the facilitator. I’ll go get ready.’
By the time Aneka had landed the ship, powered down the flight systems, checked the sensors for any life signs, and got back to the cabin, Ella was ready. Ready meant that she was dressed in a spaghetti-strapped T-shirt, shorts, and walking boots. Aneka looked at her.
‘What?’ Ella asked, trying to keep the smirk off her face.
‘You should be in a suit.’
‘There’s nothing dangerous out there, and I wanted to dress all Lara Croft for you. It’s even a desert!’
Aneka sighed. ‘All right, but if we wake up any Egyptian death gods it’s on your head.’
They went out with Aneka carrying the bulk of the equipment. She had the lab case and the climbing equipment, and her rebuilt, twin machine pistols strapped to her thighs. Ella walked beside her with the box of mapping bots and the smaller sensor units. Under other circumstances Ella might have wished to shoulder more of the burden, but it was hot. Even in the shade of the ship it was pushing fifty Celsius. In direct sunlight it was like standing in an oven.
‘You did remember to put sunblock on, right?’ Aneka asked.
‘Sprayed myself with the heavy stuff before I put my clothes on. I don’t think it’s working.’
‘You could just about walk into a fusion reactor with that stuff on, Ella. Don’t forget to drink, but pace yourself.’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘Be careful. It’s really easy to lose it in these conditions. My eyes have cut in light protection against the glare.’
‘Huh, tell me about it. These glasses are gaisu near opaque.’
There was no need for the climbing gear. Inside the walls the sand had piled up against the inner defences leaving a pit in the middle and some clear areas. Off to their left was something like a gate or a bridge, though it seemed to go only into darkness, blocked on the far side. On the right they could see a doorway into one of the towers blocked up by a door or some other obstruction.
The Winter War Page 15
