Aneka Jansen 3: Steel Heart (38 page)

‘We don’t know.’

‘I saw four men in black uniforms,’ Delta explained. ‘They had the others wrapped up in some sort of cocoons, and then they blew me up.’

‘When I came to,’ Monkey went on, ‘they were gone.’

‘Not all of them,’ Aneka replied. There was a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of what she chose to call her stomach and her mind was trying to freeze up, and she was trying hard to ignore all of it.

‘Uh, no. I assume you killed the one that was up there with you.’

‘Yeah. I got one. You’ve tried their telemetry? Radio?’

‘Everything I could think of. With you out of action and Delta’s arm busted, and my head throbbing like a bitch for hours too… I couldn’t think of a way to track them. I just…’ He stopped, set his jaw, and then continued. ‘I figured when you could move we’d try again from the air…’

‘Yeah. Maybe. I’m fuck all use to them as I am anyway. Get some rest. When it gets light I’m going to move us out of this area. They might come back and I’d rather not be here if they do.’

Monkey lowered his head to the pillow again and Aneka saw Delta’s eyes close. Then she lay there thinking. There had to be some way of finding the others. There had to be.

~~~

‘Internal systems are now sufficiently repaired to allow communication,’ Al said. Aneka had never been so happy to hear his voice.

‘Are you up to date on what’s happened?’ she asked rather than gushing at him. He knew how she felt anyway.

‘I was able to hear your thoughts, but the hardware allowing me to speak was disabled.’

‘Any thoughts on locating them?’

‘Currently, none. However, I should point out that I am a computer. While I have the ability to work through many possibilities and come to conclusions some of my less self-aware brethren would never reach, I lack a certain degree of intuitiveness which you have. Also, my mind is less complex than yours. You are smarter than I am.’

‘Huh, I don’t generally get that impression. You know more than I do for starters.’

‘Don’t confuse access to a large amount of data and the ability to search it rapidly with intelligence. I augment your thought processes by intercepting ideas, running those ideas against my data, and returning results. It makes me seem smarter than I am. I haven’t bothered disabusing you before.’

Aneka suppressed a laugh; Delta and Monkey were still asleep. ‘Cheat. So, why tell me now?’

‘Because you need to realise that you are the one who needs to come up with the ideas. You, or David, or Delta. I can assist, but you need to have the ideas for me to work with.’

‘Okay. Well I’ll get right on that. How are the repairs going?’ She turned, pulling herself around so that she could sit up. Lying down was getting boring, but her dragging right leg did not help with her feeling of well-being.

‘You’re right arm is now fully functional. Full auditory functionality will be restored in around forty minutes. Your leg will take considerably longer, but I have now been able to divert repair nanobots to your dermal layer. The bruising will start going down soon.’

‘Good, I look like a plum.’ Her eyes fell on her discarded suit and helmet. ‘Al, Delta said those men were wearing suits a bit like ours.’

‘Yes, she did. Possibly slightly more resilient. Actual battle armour rather than simply advanced survival suits.’

‘Uh-huh, and our suits have distributed computer systems in them, yes?’

‘That is also correct.’

‘So if we went and got that body from the tower block…’

‘Do I think I could hack into his suit’s computer? Aneka, you wound me with the thought that I might not.’

Aneka grinned.

Prime City, 6
^th
August 3186.

‘I’m all right, Ella,’ Gillian said. ‘I’m worried about Bash, but physically I’m fine. Though I would prefer not to be wearing a paper hospital gown.’

Ella grinned bleakly. The garments they had been put in were more like short dressing gowns, but they were made of some sort of disposable, tough paper, and they were in an institutional shade of green. Whatever Gillian said, Ella could see that the worry was eating at her.

‘And I don’t believe Aneka is gone,’ Gillian added. ‘Vashma forbid, Delta and… and David, but Aneka? The woman is almost indestructible.’

‘She’s not though. I mean, if someone damaged her brain enough…’

‘And that is behind a skull of living metal. She’s tough, and very persistent, and she won’t stop looking for us because she won’t rest until she finds you.’

Ella nodded. ‘No. You’re right, she won’t. Bash has been gone a long time. What does this Manu Dei want with us?’

‘If he’s been questioning Bash all this time, then I assume the answer is information.’

‘What information do we have?’

‘Where we came from. How we got here. What our intentions are. A better question would perhaps be “Who is Manu Dei?” He seems somewhat paranoid. A controlling individual. Something of a dictator.’

‘That doesn’t exactly bode well.’

‘No, perhaps not. Hopefully we’ll have more information when they bring Bash back. He will have at least met our mysterious host.’

London, 21.9.526 FSC.

‘You’re sure you’re all right to do this, Delta?’ Aneka asked as she set the redhead’s helmet in place for her. The suit had adjusted itself around her cast well at least; the wonders of super-high-tech clothing.

‘I’m not letting him go alone, and your leg’s not working yet. I can carry the body over my good shoulder and he can shoot anything that moves.’

Aneka nodded. Of course it was a good plan, but… ‘If any of those men are there…’

‘This is the only way we’re going to find Mom and the others,’ Monkey said. ‘Trying from the air was a longshot and we both know it.’

‘Yes, otherwise I wouldn’t even be suggesting this. I’ll have the shuttle ready to take off as soon as you’re back aboard.’ She checked the seal on Delta’s helmet and gave her a nod, and then they stepped into the airlock while Aneka limped off towards the cockpit.

The waiting was beyond annoying. She had finished the pre-flight checks by the time Monkey reported that they had made it to the room without incident. Then she just had to wait more while they made their way back, slower now with Delta lugging an armoured body. She saw them walking back, every step seeming to take an eternity, and powered up the anti-gravity system as soon as the console indicators showed the airlock’s outer door was closed.

There was a thud from the back. ‘We’re in,’ Monkey’s voice said from the speakers.

Aneka hit the thrusters and the ship jerked into the air, the inertial compensation making it feel like a gentle rise. She pulled the ship up and out of the plaza, engaging the main engines and pushing them north once they were above the buildings. A kilometre or so out, she dropped into the low valley of the M1 and continued out at barely thirty metres above the ground.

‘A bit low, aren’t we?’ Monkey asked from behind her.

‘I’m not picking up radar emissions, but I’m also not taking chances. I’m going to get us out of the area of the city and then put her back down.’

‘Okay. I’ll go see if I can crack the seal on this guy’s suit. I assume we’re going to need access to the inside?’

‘I am detecting no foreign wireless transmissions,’ Al said. ‘I believe we will need physical access.’

‘Yeah, looks like it.’

Between the road and the ruins of St Albans she spotted a ragged clump of trees which the maps they had gathered showed had various clearings in it. Swinging over that, she dropped into the first gap she could find. It seemed to take far too long to shut down the flight systems and even longer to limp her way back to the lab area where Monkey and Delta were standing over the body looking slightly disgusted.

They had managed to get the man’s helmet off. He had brown, crew-cut hair and looked like a bit of a thug: not an unattractive thug, but a thug. There was also a cable sticking out of the back of his neck which disappeared under the collar of the suit.

‘He’s wired into the thing,’ Monkey said. ‘I mean… yuck!’

Aneka grinned and settled down beside the body. ‘You haven’t been spending enough time around Ella recently. It’s just fibre optics. Ella has a port at the back of her skull not too different from this.’ She reached to the back of the man’s head, located the release stud beside the port, and pulled the cable free.

‘Like I said, yuck,’ Monkey commented.

‘Don’t let Ella hear you say that, and pass me a fibre wireless bridge.’ Delta handed over a box from one of the storage units and Aneka plugged the cable in. ‘Al,’ she said silently, ‘can you connect it up?’

‘I can, but the transmission protocols are different from the ones normally used by Federation technology. I’ll need to rewrite the bridge’s software and then discover the correct commands… This will take some time.’

Aneka tried to keep the disappointment from her face as she looked up at Monkey and Delta. When she did, however, Delta was holding her pistols out. ‘We found these too. They look kind of damaged.’

They did, one worse than the other. Aneka figured the more broken one was Bridget; her right side had taken the brunt of the explosion, so Bridget was the likely candidate. ‘Well, Al’s going to be a while breaking into the suit. I guess I’ll see what I can do about fixing them while we wait.’

Monkey produced a scanner and medical kit. ‘And Mom would rip me a new one if I didn’t get tissue and blood samples off this guy. Work’ll keep my mind off things.’

‘Then I’ll help where I can,’ Delta said. ‘I haven’t lost someone I actually love, but I’m worried too.’

‘I know,’ Monkey said. ‘Help me get some cheek swabs, then you can run the DNA while I check the biochemistry.’

Prime City, 7
^th
August 3186.

The sound of the door opening woke Ella. Two medi-techs were carrying Bashford back into the room and Ella started to get up, but then a pair of Enforcers moved in, one of them aiming his rifle at her. She stopped, and the medics carried on to the bench Bashford had been on before. He was unconscious, but she could see his chest moving.

‘What did you do to him?’ she asked. Across from her Gillian was waking too.

‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ one of the Enforcers said. ‘On your feet. Manu Dei wants to talk to you.’

‘No!’ Gillian snapped. ‘I should be next. You can’t…’

The second Enforcer turned his rifle towards Gillian. Ella got quickly to her feet. ‘It’s okay! I’m coming. See to Bash, Gillian. When he wakes up he’s going to need you.’

She started for the door, Gillian’s eyes on her the whole time. She heard the door close behind her and took four more steps before something touched the back of her neck and everything went black.

Prae Wood, 21.9.526 FSC.

‘How are the repairs coming along?’ Monkey asked.

Aneka was busy reassembling one of her pistols at a table. Her skin was back to a more normal colour at least. ‘Well, there were several parts damaged that I couldn’t replace, but I’ve managed to get one working gun from two. Meet Claret, who will hopefully do Bridget and Clara proud.’

‘I guess one gun is better than none. We got the results back on the DNA from our black-clad friend.’

‘Anything interesting?’

‘Uh, well I’m not Mom or Ella, but the computer’s pretty good at working on Jenlay… uh, Human genetics. That guy is closer to a Jenlay than he is to the people back in Matlock. A lot of markers suggesting an extended lifespan, higher intelligence, disease resistance, health… In fact, aside from some neural-sensory response coding in common, we could be looking at two different sub-species.’

‘What’s this common area?’

‘Uh… Not sure. I think it has something to do with scent. Probably increases certain neural responses to smells, though I’m not a neuroscientist so I may be wrong. Oh, and these people probably have better night vision than normal.’

‘Better night vision. And they don’t have the adaptations to radioactive fallout that the surface people have?’

‘Looks that way.’

‘So they were kept somewhere away from the fallout, where the radiation wouldn’t be a problem. That’s why we haven’t located the cities; they
are
underground. They probably didn’t have huge amounts of power to waste when they were modified. The lighting would be dim and they’d never see sunlight.’

‘But where?’

‘Not London. Probably away from the major fallout areas.’ Aneka shook her head. ‘Hopefully when Al cracks this suit’s computer we’ll know.’

Prime City, 7
^th
August 3186.

The room was dark aside from the single spotlight which lit Ella. The light was uncomfortably bright, but she could close her eyes to take away some of the glare. The rest of her discomfort was harder to ignore. She had awoken strung up in some sort of frame. Her wrists were in metal cuffs high over her head, her neck was in a metal collar which kept her chin from moving down to avoid the light, and her legs were spread apart by a pair of manacles locked around her ankles. She was also naked, but the room was warm, almost too warm. She was not sure whether she was sweating because of the heat or the fear.

Her implant told her she had been stood there for almost an hour with no sign of the mysterious Manu Dei, or any other interrogator. The idea was, she was sure, to disorient her and let the fear factor build. Well it was working, she was afraid.

‘Hello, Ella.’ The voice came from the darkness: soft, female, and somehow familiar. ‘Your friend Leo told me a lot of very interesting things and I had to take care of some of them before I came to talk to you. I apologise for the delay.’

Ella mustered as much courage as she had available. ‘The delay I can accept. I’m not so happy about the bondage.’

‘It’s necessary, for now, that you don’t resist what I’m going to do.’ The voice was closer. Ella thought she could make out a shape: tall, slim, the suggestion of short hair. ‘You’re going to enjoy… some of it.’

The voice…
It can’t be…
‘Aneka?’