Aneka Jansen 7: Hope

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Aneka Jansen 7: Hope Page 18

by Niall Teasdale


  ‘That’s the point, I can’t. If you can’t see that the Pinnacle are a threat to your very existence, given time–’

  ‘But that’s just it, they aren’t. Even if they manage to push their technology to the next generation, we could still wipe them out with no difficulty at all. We can blow up suns. On my own I wiped out eight cruisers and a heavy battleship, and then I killed every man on one of their stations. Imagine what our warships are like.’

  ‘But you won’t use them. You’ll hang back and wait. You want peace, am I correct? People who want peace do not make war.’

  ‘That’s pretty much what the last man who decided to take over the galaxy said. The AIs are logical. They’re emotionally invested in ensuring peace, and they’re quite willing to take drastic measures to make sure they get it. The Collective isn’t perfect. It has people in it for one thing, and people can be arseholes. But they know that if they start a war, Shadataga will pull their tech out from under them, and if they try anything big, they won’t live long enough to know they fucked up.’

  Trin’s eyes narrowed and she sipped more rum. Her tail curled, finding Aneka’s thigh and sliding over it. Aneka ignored it because it seemed like the tail’s owner was concentrating and the tail was doing its own thing.

  ‘I grew up on Taeonvrie,’ Trin said eventually. ‘It’s a neighbour of Iyonvrie, a nice place, but complacent. It has good tech, better than this ship, and that includes a device which they created to end the threat of nuclear war.’

  ‘Damper technology. I know the kind of thing. It’s useless against antimatter warheads, or antimatter-catalysed fusion bombs.’

  ‘Yes. I am here because I want to keep my home world safe. No one has ever thanked me for it, but there you are. I don’t think we can sit there behind our defence ships and the damper screens while the Pinnacle work out how to defeat us. I can’t speak for everyone. Ana is out for revenge as much as anything and Lanyon would follow her into Hell. No one on this ship is in it for the money, though that helps. My tail thinks that your skin feels too real to be synthetic. If I were to take one of my knives–’

  ‘You’d find the layer of monocrystal armour under the skin, and then I’d break your arm.’

  Trin’s lips curled into a grin. ‘You are quite amazing, and my tail likes you.’

  Aneka glanced down at the tail which was now stroking over her hip. ‘I quite like your tail. Tell me about Kade.’

  Gwy.

  Ella licked her lips, straightened her shirt and waited for the inner door of the airlock to open. Lanyon was on duty on the bridge, so Aneka was not with him, so all she had to do was wait for the door to open and she could talk to Aneka and everything would be okay. When it did open, it revealed Gwy’s smiling face and Ella’s heart sank.

  ‘Hello again, Ella,’ Gwy said.

  ‘I’m here to see–’

  ‘Aneka is not aboard. She has gone to see the Felix, Miss Trin. She has been gone for over thirty minutes.’

  ‘She’s with Trin?’

  ‘Yes, Ella.’

  ‘And she was with Lanyon?’

  ‘Yes, Ella.’

  ‘O-oh…’ Ella’s lips tightened. ‘Right. I’ll be back in five minutes.’

  ‘I am not sure that Aneka will be back by then.’

  ‘I’m hoping she won’t be.’

  ~~~

  The meeting with Trin had been interesting, and something to think about. Aneka was starting to conclude that Kade might be worth the effort, but there was one last thing she needed to know before deciding and that was going to be hard. Having Ella on-side would be good for that. The cute little redhead had been with the pirates for weeks now and she was bound to have useful insights if she could be trusted to get her face out from between Kade’s legs.

  Walking into the cabin, Aneka concluded that Ella had, in fact, returned to the ship during Aneka’s trip to Trin’s cabin. She also concluded that Ella was fairly willing to do anything to get back into Aneka’s good books, and that she was not too attached to the captain.

  Ella was hanging on the wall from some sort of metal cuffs which had to use magnets to cling to the metal in the walls. The strain was showing in Ella’s arms, but she was coping. Her whole body weight was hanging from her wrists since she had also managed to cuff her ankles to the wall, a good metre and a half apart. She had been taking lessons from her mother for quite a while, but getting herself splayed out like that still had to have taken quite an effort. The stretching involved was making her back arch and pushing her chest out.

  The sight of Ella’s naked, vulnerable body sent a little thrill through Aneka. On an intellectual level, she knew it was not real; her synthetic body reacted to the functions of her mind within its cybernetic shell, not to any physical stimuli. Another intellectual point was that Ella had cheated on her. That really did not matter: Ella was offering herself up to be used as Aneka wished, or ignored. Aneka ignored her, unstrapping her holster from her thigh and acting as though she had not even noticed Ella hanging there.

  It was when she turned her back and walked over to a cabinet near the bed that Ella spoke. Her voice was timid, uncertain. ‘Aneka?’

  Aneka said nothing, but she turned back after a few seconds and walked over to where Ella was suspended. She moved in close and Ella let out a gasp as a thin, metallic probe slid into her and she felt cool metal against her labia. A sensation she had not felt in a while, a slight tingling followed by a growing warmth, began. The last thing Ella heard before the neurostim turned her mind into a sea of incoherent pleasure was Aneka’s voice whispering, ‘I’m going to make you scream so hard you wake the neighbours in the next system.’

  ~~~

  Aneka held Ella against her as hot water streamed down onto them. The little redhead, her little redhead, was still trembling and she hung limply in Aneka’s arms for several minutes letting the water soak into her hair.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Ella whispered.

  ‘So am I.’

  ‘What… what’ve you got to be sorry for? Except maybe for breaking me.’

  ‘I should have said something about Devor. He wasn’t important and it never came up, and… I should have said something.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘He tried to get me into bed for about two months before he got to you. I knew exactly why he was doing it. He thought he could get a leg up on his career. As well as a leg over, of course.’

  ‘So when he came on to me… Damn, I gave him just what he wanted. Or was he trying to get back at you for rejecting him?’

  ‘Don’t know. But if I’d said something we probably wouldn’t have ended up like this, so it’s my fault as well.’

  Ella managed a giggle. ‘Actually, I quite like how we’ve ended up, even if my legs still won’t work. Anyway, maybe we needed a bit of a kick. I had a lot of time to think about us when I was locked up in Pinnacle cells. We’ve been–’

  ‘Taking each other for granted. I know. I had time to think about it too. Still… Ian Devor? I mean, I almost can’t forgive you for that. Almost anyone else, but him?’

  ‘I know. I’d broken up with him before the Pinnacle killed him, and he was constantly at me to start up again. Everyone’s judgement lapses now and then? So… how were Lanyon and Trin?’

  ‘Lanyon was a little naïve, very enthusiastic, and he acted just the way I expected, which means he started talking to keep me from going again after the second time round. Men do that when faced with insatiable women.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And I didn’t sleep with Trin. We just talked. I think her tail wanted in, but she was being strict with it.’

  ‘Oh… So you were gathering information, not actually rubbing my nose in it?’

  Aneka chuckled softly. ‘I admit to a little nose rubbing. Worked, didn’t it?’

  ‘I’d hit you, but I don’t think you’d notice. Did you have to make me come quite so many times?’

  ‘Yes. And when you’ve eaten and recovered,
I’m going to do it again. I’m not going to take you for granted ever again.’

  Ella whimpered. ‘You can take me a little bit for granted,’ she said in her smallest voice.

  22.12.559 FSC.

  ‘Wasn’t this the medical bay?’ Lanyon asked as he peered around the briefing room with its long table and ten chairs.

  ‘Reconfigurable space,’ Aneka replied. ‘Gwy’s a little too small to have all the rooms we need, and the AIs haven’t quite figured out pocket dimensions or dimensional transcendence yet.’

  ‘Uh… right.’

  Aneka sighed. ‘Doctor Who references are just wasted on some people.’

  ‘Lovely though this is,’ Kade said, nodding to the image of Gwy occupying one of the walls, ‘why are we here?’

  ‘I have to concur with my captain,’ Trin put in.

  ‘Okay,’ Aneka said, nodding, ‘how did the Pinnacle know you were coming? How did they know when you were coming?’

  ‘They set a trap and waited–’ Kade began.

  ‘They knew within a day when you were arriving.’

  Gwy turned slightly and a system map appeared beside her, markers showing the positions of the station and the wrecks of the ships. ‘You have seen where the vessels are located. They know you have cloaking technology and yet they stand out in the open where you can see them. When you arrived, you would recognise the trap and leave before they could open fire.’

  ‘Their battle plan,’ Aneka continued, ‘was to post themselves in the shadow of asteroids and let you in to attack the station. They planted a tracking device on Ella before she even got to Ariadne which would then be activated, and then they’d have a target and you’d be dust before you realised what was happening. We took the tracker out last night.’

  Kade frowned, but it was Trin who spoke. ‘It makes sense, Boss. How they knew we’d pick Ella up–’

  ‘They’ve been studying you for a long time. They have some pretty thorough psychological profiles, and they made damn sure Ella would end up right in your path. A bit of luck was involved, but more planning.’

  ‘Okay, so how did they know about the timing?’

  ‘We found this in the traffic we harvested from Haven,’ Cassandra said, indicating a section of wall which was now displaying an image. Everyone looked at the image.

  ‘Well okay,’ Trin said, ‘she’s not bad looking and she has great breasts, but I can do that?’

  Lanyon, his cheeks colouring, looked at her. ‘You can?’

  ‘I don’t plan on demonstrating. Why are we looking at Felix porn?’

  ‘Because the file is fifty-two per cent larger than it needs to be for the image data it displays,’ Cassandra explained. ‘The encapsulated data file was encrypted using a Pinnacle military-grade cypher system which we were only able to decrypt using software we took from a communications and computer facility on Ranson.’ The image was replaced by a text file display, which seemed to relieve Lanyon somewhat. ‘This was the reply to a message sent out by someone on Haven. It confirms receipt of your departure time.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ Kade said.

  Aneka watched her, analysis software capturing every tiny expression as it worked its way across the captain’s features. Disbelief, horror, the glimmer of a thought which might mean this was somehow wrong…

  ‘If they have a spy on Haven,’ Kade continued, ‘they would have destroyed us long ago.’

  ‘Not if they want you gone, but Haven right where it is,’ Ella said.

  ‘Haven is the resistance against them! The one place every one of their slaves knows they can go to if they escape. The–’

  ‘That’s precisely the point,’ Ella broke in. ‘It gives all their subjects hope. It’s the one tiny glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Without it, all those slaves, billions of them, would have nothing to lose.’

  ‘People with nothing to lose have a power no one else can match,’ Aneka said. ‘I’ve seen it. When there’s no hope of really winning, a man will strap ten pounds of plastic explosives to his chest and run into a bar full of soldiers. He’ll give his life to kill that one general no one could possibly get to. She’ll die trying to kill the man who ordered her brother to his death.’

  ‘Haven gives them hope,’ Ella went on. ‘Hope of sanctuary, if you like. And the pirates there, except for you, prey on more ships outside Pinnacle space than in. You are the one they need to get rid of. People idolise you more than anyone else. You attack Pinnacle vessels and stations. You actually succeed in freeing their slaves and prisoners. They wipe out the Hope and kill Captain Kade, and the others will never try anything as bold as you, ever again.’

  ‘But now they’ve failed,’ Aneka stated, ‘and you’re still alive. So what happens next, Captain Kade?’

  Silence fell across the room. Gwy’s crew waited for an answer, and Trin and Lanyon looked to Kade. The captain sat with her head bowed, her hair forming a curtain over her face.

  ‘They’ll come looking for me in Haven,’ she said softly. ‘It may be useful for them, but they won’t want it becoming a real rallying point. They’ll send in their fleet and wipe everyone out. We can’t go back.’

  ‘Boss,’ Trin said warily, ‘we have people with families on Haven…’

  ‘I know. We’ll… go to Oberian. Anyone who wants to can leave then, head back on a trader. After that…’

  ‘Without a base to operate from,’ Lanyon said, ‘we’ll be hard-pressed to keep supplied.’

  ‘We can’t go back to Haven,’ Kade stated firmly, raising her head finally. ‘It is the one hope of refuge people have, even if it’s a false hope. I want the Pinnacle to pay for what they did to… But not at the cost of everyone in that system.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ Aneka said. Ella was grinning brightly: she had not been entirely sure how Kade would respond. ‘So I was thinking of something a little more drastic and a little more likely to result in the Pinnacle getting knocked back a step or three.’

  Kade’s eyes narrowed. ‘What exactly do you have in mind?’

  ‘Well, the first thing we’re going to have to do is kill Captain Anastasia Kade.’

  25.12.559 FSC.

  ‘Ella?’ Aneka called out as she walked into their cabin. ‘Gwy said you needed me in here.’ She stopped as she saw Ella, standing beside the bed. ‘Okay…’

  The pretty redhead was naked, aside from some ribbons. There was one around her hips, another around her breasts, a third tying her hands behind her back, and the last one covered her mouth. She was looking a little sheepish, but she was waiting patiently for Aneka to free her, so Aneka walked over and carefully undid the bow over her lips.

  ‘Happy Christmas,’ Ella said, grinning.

  ‘It’s… I guess it is. Totally slipped my mind. We haven’t really done anything for a few years.’ She leaned forward and their lips met, teasingly at first and then more fiercely.

  ‘We’ve been busy,’ Ella replied when they finally broke the kiss. ‘And now we’re going to take the time for a bit of Christmas, even if we have to steal it away from the busy. Come on, unwrap your presents.’

  Smirking, Aneka tugged on the bow over her partner’s breasts. ‘Cassandra did these for you?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Thought so. That woman does such neat bows.’ Aneka’s hands cupped Ella’s breasts, sliding over the skin. Her thumbs shifted up and began teasing at nipples which stiffened rapidly. Ella let out a little moan, her eyelids fluttering. Bending forward, Aneka sucked a nipple in, flicking it with her tongue, and this time the moan was louder. Finding the lower bow by touch, Aneka pulled it free, letting the red ribbon pool at Ella’s feet. A finger slid between labia which were already wet from anticipation and found the little nub there. She began a gentle rotation over it.

  ‘You… you haven’t unwrapped… me properly,’ Ella panted.

  ‘The rule in my house was that you have to play with each toy you get before you unwrap the next one.’

  ‘O-oh�
�� right.’

  Aneka slid to her knees. ‘So I’m going to play with this one for a couple of hours before I do that last one. This one looks like so much fun.’ She leaned forward, replacing finger with tongue and then sliding two fingers up to find the spot which always made Ella squirm so much.

  ‘Oh… Vashma.’

  Pirate Cove, Haven, 4.1.560 FSC.

  ‘Anastasia Kade was the best captain there was,’ Trin said. She was standing beside a glass-topped, metal coffin which was resting on a table in Nightside. Inside it was the woman she was talking about, laid out in her pirate costume, her sword beside her. She looked peaceful. ‘She fought the Pinnacle with a ferocity no one could match. She took us to new heights. She was my friend. Captain Kade!’

  There was a chorus of responses from all of those gathered in the bar to see Kade off. Trin raised her glass to the coffin and then emptied it.

  ‘The crew have taken a vote,’ Trin went on. ‘Without Ana… It just won’t be the same. Some of us will be joining other crews, if there’s space for us. Some of us will find something else to do with our time. The Hope is too badly damaged to be salvageable. We were lucky to get home. She’ll sit as a memorial to her captain.’ She looked down at the coffin again, frowned and then said, ‘Let’s get this done.’

  Eight men, including Lanyon, carried Kade’s coffin through the streets and then to the hangar bay where it was loaded into a gutted missile which Cubby had prepared, jury-rigged to follow a pre-defined course. The crew of the Hope and as many other Haven citizens as they could gather in the observation decks stood and watched as the tiny spaceship powered out of the bay and off into deep space.

  Gwy.

  The hatch of the medical pod lifted smoothly and Anastasia Kade struggled into a sitting position, accepting a bottle of isotonic water from Ella with a grateful smile. ‘Did they buy it?’

  ‘I have intercepted an outgoing transmission using Pinnacle encryption,’ Gwy said from the room’s speakers. ‘It contained a full report of the Hope’s return, your funeral, and details from a medical scan performed to confirm you were dead.’

 

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