This was despite the fact that they were sharing a cabin! There had been some rearrangement of accommodation on the Garnet Hyde since Aneka’s last trip aboard her. Wallace had been moved into what had been Gillian’s cabin. It was not a question of seniority or anything; Gillian had moved in with Bashford. They had not made their relationship even vaguely official, and Aneka got the impression this was more of a renewal of a former state than a new thing, but they had decided not to bother hiding the fact that they were more than just colleagues. Wallace’s assistant, Cassandra, had moved into Shannon’s cabin since the telepath was usually in Drake’s. Shannon had her own room as far from the others as possible because she sometimes needed to be alone with her own thoughts. Having Cassandra in the room with her was not an issue, however, since Cassandra was a sentient android and Shannon could no more read her than she could Aneka. Aneka and Ella were in the same place they had always been in, which practically meant that the upper bunk in their room never got used.
‘It’s giving,’ Delta grunted, and then she was flying backwards as the door did, indeed, break free. Neither she nor Aneka actually went far; the ship was in zero gravity, and the only thing keeping them anchored to the deck was the setae strip on the soles of their boots. Delta’s thigh muscles bunched as she did her best to control her momentum.
‘It gave,’ Aneka agreed. ‘That’s the last one, isn’t it?’
Delta was shifting her weight to push the door open the rest of the way. Reactive controls released the nanofibre bonds on her boots, letting her move to a new position where she pressed back down to re-engage the ‘molecular glue,’ and then applied herself to sliding the door open the rest of the way. ‘Yeah, I think so. We’ve opened…’ She stopped to let out a grunt of effort as the door stuck, ‘…every door and panel we could find.’
Aneka looked past her, into the room. Several pairs of articulated arms hung limply from the ceiling, each ending in a set of heavy, padded manacles. Below each limb was a similar one sprouting from and lying on the floor. A flicker of memory, of being held in those cuffs, naked, vulnerable, and waiting to be taken for examination, passed through her mind.
‘You really spent a thousand plus years in this place?’ Delta asked.
‘I was unconscious for pretty much all of it. In a big tube on the other side of the ship.’
The light shifted as Delta moved her head. ‘Let’s get out of here. This ship gives me the creeps. I’m amazed you aren’t freaking out. Though, I guess you’re not… uh… Well, you wouldn’t… uh…’
‘I’m quite capable of freaking out, Delta. My mind’s no different than it was. Which is the point. I was trained not to get scared in tense environments.’
Delta gave her an embarrassed grin. ‘I’ll get used to, well, you eventually.’
‘Everyone else we’ve told has.’ Aneka was pretty sure that it was not prejudice that was giving Delta problems. The other reason she was on the team was that she was a robotics technician. No, Delta’s problem was that she just could not get the hang of a robot who had once been a living woman. She could handle people, and robots, but not both in the same package. She was still not quite sure which to treat Aneka as.
Unlocking their boots they headed for the airlock. ‘I think,’ Delta said as they went, ‘I think I’d have gone fafung if someone had done to me what they did to you.’
‘Fafung?’
‘Sorry, it’s Rimmic. Mad, nuts, insane.’
‘Ah… Maybe. I’m not sure why I didn’t.’ Aneka grinned. ‘Ella keeps coming out with random Rimmic words. They always sound a little like Chinese.’
‘I wouldn’t know. I’m not fully fluent in it. A lot of the immigrants to Drahain spoke it so it paid to learn.’
‘Drahain? Your home world?’
‘High Drahain, technically. It’s a core world, but there’s a lot of mining, so a lot of immigrant miners. The natives don’t like it, but they’d rather not get their hands dirty so they have to live with it.’
‘Immigrant workers and robots?’
‘Huh? Oh, my skill set? Mostly I worked on powered exoskeletons. They’re essentially mindless robots. The basic mechanics and the skills required for full robots are the same.’
‘Fair enough.’ Silently Aneka patched her internal comms through to the station. ‘Jansen to Bashford. We’re done and heading back, Bash. You can start the scans any time.’
Bashford’s voice sounded in her head a second later. ‘Monkey and I will have the drones ready when you get to the door.’
‘Should we radio ahead?’ Delta asked. ‘Doctor Wallace seemed anxious to get things moving.’
Aneka grinned. ‘I just did.’
There was a nervous giggle. ‘Right. Internal radio. That’s something else I’ll have to get used to.’
Four small robots, each powered along by four ducted turbofans, swept out past the two women as the airlock door opened. One took up station near the door while the others carried on into the ship. On the other side of the door was Monkey, looking slightly uncomfortable.
He was good-looking, like everyone was, with a smoothly muscled, if slim, body. He took after his father, a Captain in the Navy, in most ways, except for build; Ape Gibbons was a huge man. To differentiate himself, David, who everyone called Monkey, had an unruly mop of black hair which threatened to cover his eyes, and an attempt at a goatee beard. Ape shaved his head as well as his chin. Monkey’s mother had apparently provided his size: she was Gillian Gilroy.
‘Come on through,’ Monkey said. ‘Bash’s waiting in the control room to start the scan.’
Delta pushed ahead, past Monkey, and Aneka noted the slight flush around her cheeks as she passed. Sooner or later the two of them were bound to notice they were attracted to each other.
‘Surely the bulge in his shipsuit should be a giveaway,’ Al commented.
Aneka had learned not to laugh aloud when her AI made comments like that. She just said, ‘Shut up, you,’ inside her mind and followed Delta through into the station. Her skin sensors noted the flicker of an imaging lidar beam that hit her just before the door closed; Bashford had kicked off the scan.
‘Bash says you two are off duty until we start rigging the lights,’ Monkey added. ‘Ella said she’d see you in your cabin, Aneka.’
Which meant the redhead was horny. ‘Thanks, Monkey,’ Aneka replied and started off through the station. Monkey followed them, but peeled off at the control room leaving the two women to carry on through to the Garnet Hyde.
‘I wish these suits weren’t so…’ Delta began, pausing to consider what she disliked about them.
‘Translucent? Figure-hugging?’ Aneka supplied.
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, they wouldn’t provide the pressure support needed without the latter and I’m told the transparency is to allow medical sensors to work through them.’
‘I know. I know why they’re made this way. I just wish they didn’t need to be.’
It was kind of rare to find a Jenlay who was… prudish. ‘You could probably wear something over it.’
Delta grimaced. ‘I’m trying to fit in. You’re not even from this time and that suit of yours is mostly transparent and skimpy.’ It was, that was true; the Ultraskin suit was bi-toned, black and steel-grey, and variously translucent. The hips were cut high and it was sleeveless, but the fact was that you could see pretty much everything under it anyway.
Aneka gave a short laugh. ‘Yeah, well… I was trying to fit in too. You’ll get used to it.’ She settled onto the floor of the Hyde’s airlock as the gravity field asserted itself. It was something of a relief; she functioned fine in zero G, but she was not really used to it yet.
‘Like everything else,’ Delta replied. The inner airlock door opened and she set off into the ship. ‘I’ll see you later.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Aneka replied. ‘Light rigging. Should be enormous fun.’
~~~
‘What do you know about High Drahain?’ Aneka asked. E
lla gave a whimper in response; Aneka’s fingers were teasing her clitoris with an expertise born of much practice. Smirking, she added, ‘Come on, High Drahain, what do you know?’
‘Oh… It’s… It’s an old c-colony. Founded by… oh Vashma… Founded by a religious group… originally. Anthrop… shin chou, don’t stop! Anthropologically interesting. Stratified society. Tends to nggg… tends towards a view that women… women should be home-makers.’
‘That explains Delta, and doesn’t.’
‘D-Delta’s young… ohhh… Probably rebelled against… Please, Aneka, stop teasing.’
‘I like it when you squirm.’
‘Please…’
Relenting, Aneka picked up the pace and it took only a few seconds before the little redhead was thrashing against her. ‘For a woman who could probably crush a man’s head between her thighs, she’s painfully insecure,’ Aneka said as the wriggling subsided.
‘Jenlay on Drahain don’t wear the revealing clothes you see in a lot of the core.’ Ella’s voice was breathy, but not exhausted; that meant she would want to go again soon. ‘There’s far less recreational sex. It’s not entirely impossible that she’s a virgin. A lot of the Drainies still consider intercourse as a means for reproduction and nothing else. You do it as part of a legal partnership and not otherwise.’
Marriage had fallen by the wayside in the last thousand years; people lived too long to make it really workable. There were legal statutes which could be invoked to govern joint property and the like, but actual marriage and the baggage that went with it was gone. It was interesting to discover some parts of society still viewed it in a more old-fashioned manner.
‘If she was being rebellious, I’d be surprised if she hasn’t dabbled,’ Aneka commented.
‘Assuming she could find someone to dabble her.’
Aneka giggled at the turn of phrase. ‘There’s always someone around who’ll dabble a willing young woman.’
‘Yeah, but they can be hard to find. I had to hide in a dark cupboard to get someone to dabble me.’
Not particularly wanting to be reminded of Ella’s first experience of sex, Aneka set her fingers to work again. Ella let out a moan and Aneka said, ‘Not any more you don’t.’
4.8.524 FSC.
The facilitators were busy laying cables and placing lights. The cables passed through the old reactor room and then through the hull patch, just as the conduits pumping air into the ship did. The bio-plastic sheet they had used to seal the hull was quite amazing stuff; bio-plastic was the kind of stuff Aneka considered science-fiction-made-real in fact. It did everything these days, including providing the material for their suits, in different forms. Tough, flexible where needed and hard where needed, self-repairing, it was the universal material of the future. The only thing which was as much use was setae strip, which could bond just about anything to just about anything in a reversible way. Setae strip was what was fixing the cables and lights to the walls and ceilings. The cables were super-conductive bio-plastic, Transdux, sheathed in insulating Plastex.
Aneka and Delta were working their way down one side of the ship, the port side, while Monkey and Bashford did the other side. That arrangement kept Aneka away from the room she had spent her thousand-year sleep in, and the lab she had been dissected in. Ella was working with the two women. That side of the ship had not been part of the minimal survey the Garnet Hyde’s crew had done after finding Aneka. Delta had been happy to go along with the plan since it meant she was not working with either of the men. She was not entirely comfortable around half-naked women, but even less so around similarly dressed men.
‘This must have been the medical bay,’ Ella said from one of the doorways at the side of the broad, orbital corridor. They had put a light in there about ten minutes earlier and Ella had started doing a quick inventory of the contents soon after. ‘There are drug bottles, various devices which look like they had a medical function. They might have done some biological research in there…’
‘No, I think they kept that to the lab on the other side,’ Aneka stated. ‘I’ve no memory of being in there. I can remember the cell block about two doors ahead, but not that room.’
Ella moved past the two facilitators and shone a torch into the room with the restraints. ‘You’ve never really said much about what you remember from the ship.’ Her voice sounded distant. She could obviously imagine Aneka fixed in the manacles, terrified and helpless.
‘Enough,’ Aneka replied. ‘It’s not much. Fragments. I think they kept us drugged most of the time. I woke up in that room once and they tried to feed me some sort of paste. I screamed a lot of obscenities at them. After that I just remember the lab and the cutting.’
Delta shuddered. ‘It must have been…’
‘The most terrifying experience of my life. That’s another reason a slightly spooky old ship doesn’t really bother me. I’ve been through Hell. This is a cake walk.’ She looked around at the still shadowed portions of the corridor. ‘Maybe if there were more creaking, some shuffling sounds from the corners, strange clicking noises… An ominous soundtrack would be good.’
‘Why would you want an ominous soundtrack?’ Ella asked.
‘It’s very horror movie. You can always tell when the monster is about to leap out and eat someone because the soundtrack goes ominous.’
‘Oh. I don’t really watch that kind of movie much.’
‘I know. Inane sex comedies are your thing.’
‘They’re not inane!’ Ella squeaked, thoughts of monsters crawling out of the air vents instantly replaced. ‘They’re…’
‘Puerile?’ Delta suggested.
‘You don’t like them either?’ Aneka asked, brightening a little.
‘They’re okay, once in a while, when there’s nothing better on and I’m feeling, uh, well… you know.’
Aneka gave a slight shrug. ‘I don’t get to feel like that long enough to watch a film. Ella’s a redhead.’
‘What’s her hair colour got to do with anything?’ There was a hint of embarrassment about the question; well Delta’s hair was, perhaps, more red than brown.
Aneka smiled. ‘You can sleep with a brunette, you might get to sleep with a blonde, but a redhead’ll keep you up all night.’ Both Delta and Ella went red, Delta went almost scarlet.
‘I don’t think I’m a proper redhead then.’
Ella, apparently, decided that Delta was not to be allowed off the hook. ‘I bet you are. You just need the right guy to get you going. Or maybe the right girls…’ Delta’s blush extended down her throat and Ella giggled. ‘She’s awfully easy to tease. This could be fun. We need to go down to Corax sometime, just the girls. We can go to Feathers, and get drunk and inappropriate.’
Corax was the moon they were in orbit around, though ‘moon’ was doing it a disservice. Aneka was unsure what ‘Feathers’ was, but guessed it was some sort of club. ‘If we’re going out for a drink,’ Aneka countered, ‘I’d rather we did something that lasts longer than the time it takes for you to get drunk and start stripping, love.’
Ella pouted; she had terrible alcohol tolerance, and she knew it, but that did not mean Aneka had to point it out. ‘I’m not that bad. And there would be men there and I’m not going to get naked around men right now. They’d get the right idea.’
‘You mean the wrong idea,’ Delta said.
‘No, the right one, usually. There was a bit of an… incident a few months ago and I’m kind of off men. I’ve got this plan to get over it, but then this project came up and there was all the planning…’ The incident had been their kidnapping by a slightly deranged terrorist and Ella’s rape in the name of progressing the Human race. The story had made the news networks pretty heavily. The Humanity First organisation running a breeding farm and terrorist training camp was big news. However, the names of the women involved had been kept secret and the official story was that a team of marines had stormed the private island. No mention had been made of the fact that, by the time
the marines had arrived, Aneka had killed almost every male on the island.
Aneka activated the light she had just attached to the ceiling and there was a little less darkness. ‘We’re getting there. Another… ten lights? And the last couple of rooms.’
Delta looked down the corridor towards the bow of the ship. ‘Sounds right. Then there’s the flight deck to rig. Bash and Monkey got it worst; they got most of the engineering section.’
‘Huh, good point. There’s the sensor suite down that side, and the stealth and electronic warfare sections. Doc Wallace is going to want all that well lit.’
‘We’re going to be at this for the rest of the day.’
‘At least we’re busy,’ Ella pointed out. ‘And when we’re finished we’ll be in the mood to relax and get busy.’
‘Redheads,’ Aneka said, shaking her head.
Wisely, Delta said nothing at all.
~~~
‘As your initial survey suggested,’ Wallace began, ‘the breach made a near total mess of the reactor itself.’ He was sitting in the motorised wheelchair he was using a lot aboard the Hyde, his eyes on the wall at the back of the mess hall-cum-conference room where the lidar-mapped schematic of the reactor room was being displayed. ‘The failure was catastrophic. In fact, it was almost too catastrophic. I need to do further analysis, but it appears that there were multiple plasma releases from the core.’
‘That shouldn’t happen,’ Drake commented. ‘I’m no engineer, but no breach of that type I’ve ever heard of had multiple points of failure.’
The Cold Steel Mind Page 2
