And now she was going to walk out on them with Ella on some secret errand for Winter, and she would not be able to tell them why they were leaving. She grinned; Dillon would be pissed, he always liked a titty fuck before she went.
University of New Earth.
Aneka and Ella were the last to arrive at the conference room. Gillian, Wallace, Cassandra, and Winter were already there. Aneka half-expected to see Elroy, but the politician was absent. Winter nodded to them as they entered and rose to her feet.
‘I’m sorry to interrupt your mid-week break, but we received a transmission from Negral two hours ago which you should all see.’
Aneka frowned. The other reason they had been celebrating was the finalisation of the treaty with the Negral AIs. In three days, ships from Negral were to set out to an uninhabited garden world on the very edge of the Rim to start construction of the educational facility they were calling the Galactic University. Aneka thought the name sucked, but no one had asked her. Still, it was going to be a matter of months before the AIs were teaching students from the Federation.
Winter tapped a button on her tablet and looked up at the wall. It darkened and then filled with a view of space. There was a shape in the middle of the screen, difficult to identify at first until some sort of image intensification was applied and the view zoomed in. The shape was a huge ship, long and slim, and turning slowly towards the camera. Smaller vessels were emerging from the underside of it, near the bow. The bow itself had a shape Aneka thought she recognised.
‘That’s a Mordra Kai battleship,’ she said. ‘The one we went aboard?’
‘I don’t believe so,’ Wallace replied. ‘That one had nothing in the docking bay.’
As they watched, the battleship swung around and its main gun lit up brightly in the enhanced view. ‘Oh shit!’ Aneka said, and then the screen turned to snow.
‘That was all we got,’ Winter said. ‘We’ve sent a message back, requesting a status update, but this does not look good.’
‘No,’ Wallace said, ‘for a number of reasons. Not least of them is the fact that that was a Xinti vessel.’
Winter nodded and looked at Aneka. ‘Thoughts?’
Aneka shrugged. ‘The Xinti are dead…’
‘Apparently not.’
‘Then… they decided to stop the AIs interacting with the Federation?’
‘That was my immediate working theory. We’ll be conducting further analysis of the video. Senator Elroy is dispatching messages to everyone he can think of. The Navy is mobilising ships and increasing patrols on the outer borders. We have to hope those Xinti don’t have the wormhole technology the AIs had.’
‘Unlikely,’ Wallace told her. ‘It relied on the exotic star they were in orbit around.’
‘That is the first piece of good news I’ve heard today.’ She picked up her tablet. ‘We may need to contact any of you at any time. Make sure you’re not out of contact.’ With that she headed for the rear door of the room and was gone.
‘Gopi,’ Ella said.
‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ Gillian stated.
Yorkbridge Mid-town, 27.9.525 FSC.
‘You really think that some group of lost Xinti turned up, right now, to destroy Negral?’ Ella asked. They were at home; going into the university had seemed unnecessary somehow. Gillian had called earlier to say that she would be at home with Bashford. Monkey and Delta were joining them there in the afternoon.
‘I don’t know. It seems like too much of a coincidence, but then we didn’t know anything about Negral until they pulled us through a wormhole.’ Aneka had felt this way before and she could recognise the feeling in others. It was not so much that Negral may have been destroyed, more that there was an unknown quantity of the most dangerous creatures ever encountered out there. It was the feeling that bad things were about to happen and most of the populace knew nothing about it. It was not the feeling that war might be coming, but the knowledge that they knew and could not tell anyone. ‘I think,’ Aneka said, ‘that we can’t be sure of what’s going on, and until we can we should avoid jumping to conclusions.’
‘But if they are Xinti, then they’ll come here next.’
‘We don’t know that.’
‘They’ll assume we know about them.’
‘We can’t assume they know the AIs got a message out.’
Ella frowned at her. ‘They can’t assume that their existence isn’t known. They have to come after us.’
Aneka shook her head. ‘We saw one battleship and some smaller craft. A battleship from before the war at that. Wouldn’t you think they’d have built new ships in a thousand years? It could be one small enclave, too small to take on the Federation. The Xinti weren’t stupid. They won’t start a war unless they can win it.’
‘You’re trying to make me feel better,’ Ella said, her tone accusing.
‘Is it working?’
‘A bit.’
Aneka grinned at her. ‘Good. We can panic when there’s a real war to worry about. For now I’m more worried about Speaker and Eve, and all the others.’
Ella nodded. ‘The station wasn’t unarmed, and it had technology the Xinti didn’t have. I don’t think they went down without a fight, and I’m not sure they didn’t blast that battleship out of the sky.’
‘Then why no further communication?’
‘Any reason. Damaged communications system.’
Aneka laughed. ‘Now you’re trying to make me feel better.’
‘Is it working?’
Aneka reached out with one arm and pulled Ella into her lap. ‘A bit.’
University of New Earth, 29.1.525 FSC.
Winter was not dressed in her plaid skirt this time; the grey suit was her business attire. She only had the one bodyguard, a woman in a black skirt suit who looked like she could have arm-wrestled Dillon with no trouble. The guard stopped by the door while Winter continued into the outer office, waving for Aneka and Ella to follow as she headed through into Gillian’s room.
‘You’re making a habit of these visits,’ Gillian was saying as Aneka walked in after Ella.
Winter watched the door close. ‘If I’m honest, I prefer it when I can turn up in a mini-skirt. These formal meetings make my teeth hurt.’
‘If it’s a formal visit, perhaps we should get down to business.’
Winter’s nose wrinkled, but she nodded. ‘Yes, unfortunately. Next time it’s the plaid skirt and the pigtails. Very well…’ She paused, taking stock. ‘We’ve heard nothing from Negral. Right now the Administration is in chaos over whether the Xinti have returned. The Herosians are requesting permission to move significant forces into the region of space around Sapphira.’
‘That’s Jenlay space,’ Ella said, sounding mildly shocked.
‘And, obviously, we’re denying them that permission at the moment. However, pressure will build to reinforce that region if we can’t prove that there isn’t a threat. We need more information. We’re sending a frigate, the Delta Brigantia, out to Negral. It’s being prepared; the crew are being brought up to speed. It’ll be ready to leave in ten days.’
‘And you want us to go?’ Gillian asked.
‘Actually, I want Aneka to go.’
‘What?!’ Ella squeaked.
‘The Brigantia’s crew will be read-in on her nature. She speaks Xinti. She can carry all the information they may need, and she’s the only one who knows where they’re going. If everything is okay the AIs can erase the crew’s memory of the location as they did with yours, and if it’s not… Well, then the location won’t matter.’
‘But…’ Ella began. Aneka stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.
‘She’s right, love. And I owe it to the AIs to find out what happened.’
‘But you could be killed!’
‘I could be killed crossing the street.’
‘The Brigantia is a fast ship,’ Winter said. ‘Faster than the Hyde is, even now. They’ll be out and back before you know it.’
Ella looked up at Aneka. ‘It sounds like your mind is made up.’ Aneka nodded. ‘Then I won’t try to change it. We’ve got ten days to say goodbye.’
‘Not goodbye,’ Aneka replied, ‘just au revoir.’ She knew that was not going to satisfy Ella, of course. ‘I’m coming back, with good news. Just be ready to celebrate.’
The ever cheerful Ella Narrows looked far older when she was sad.
###
About the Author
I was born in the vicinity of Hadrian's Wall so perhaps a bit of history rubbed off. Ancient history obviously, and border history, right on the edge of the Empire. I always preferred the Dark Ages anyway; there’s so much more room for imagination when people aren’t writing down every last detail. So my idea of a good fantasy novel involved dirt and leather, not shining plate armour and Hollywood-medieval manners. The same applies to my sci-fi, really; I prefer gritty over shiny.
Oddly, then, one of the first fantasy novels I remember reading was The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper (later made into a terrible juvenile movie). These days we would call Cooper’s series Young Adult Contemporary Fantasy and looking back on it, it influenced me a lot. It has that mix of modern day life, hidden history, and magic which failed to hit popular culture until the early days of Buffy and Anne Rice. Of course, Cooper’s characters spend their time around places I could actually visit in Cornwall, and South East England, and mid-Wales. In fact, when I went to university in Aberystwyth, it was partially because some of Cooper’s books were set a few miles to the north around Tywyn.
I got into writing through roleplaying, however, so my early work was related to the kind of roleplaying game I was interested in. I wrote “high fantasy” when I was playing Dungeons & Dragons. I wrote a lot of superhero fiction when I was playing City of Heroes. I still loved the idea of a modern world with magic in it and I’ve been trying to write a novel based on this for a long time. As with any form of expression, practice is the key and I can look back on all the aborted attempts at books, and the more successful short stories, as steps along the path to the Thaumatology Series.
Writing, sadly, is not my main source of income. By day, I’m a computer programmer. I work for a telecommunications company in Manchester, England. My favourite authors are Terry Pratchett, Susan Cooper, and (recently) Kim Harrison. Kim’s Hollows books were what finally spurred me to publish something, even if the trail to here came by way of Susan, back in school, several decades ago.
For More Information
The Thaumatology Blog: http://steelbeneaththeskin.wordpress.com
Other Books by this Author
The Aneka Jansen Series
Steel Beneath The Skin - ASIN: B00D4MN40O
The Thaumatology Series
Thaumatology 101 - ASIN: B006IYIESW
Demon’s Moon - ASIN: B006JPN7A0
Legacy - ASIN: B006OKR8PK
Dragon’s Blood - ASIN: B0072S1DOU
Disturbia - ASIN: B007GNICZO
Hammer of Witches - ASIN: B007YG2I44
Eagle’s Shadow - ASIN: B008E17TYW
Ancient - ASIN: B00923F8AS
Dragonfall - ASIN: B00AKV95XW
The Other Side of Hell - ASIN: B00AS0NF54
For Whom the Wedding Bells Toll - ASIN: B00BNSQ4AS
Anthologies in the Thaumatology Universe
Tales from High Towers’ Study - ASIN: B006ZAJ7TY
Tales from the Dubh Linn - ASIN: B0080XPD88
Table of Contents
Part One: Ghost Ship
Part Two: Down The Rabbit Hole
Part Three: Wonderland
Part Four: The Art Of Diplomacy
Part Five: Quint
Part Six: The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be
The Cold Steel Mind Page 32
