Aneka Jansen 6: The Lowest Depths of Shame (17 page)

Aneka gave a shrug. ‘Well, it keeps me from getting bored.’

Corax, 1.11.530 FSC.

There were fewer people around the frigate when Aneka entered the bay for the second time. There had been more around Feathers and a few of the other public areas, so someone believed in rest days. They still had people working on the ship, however, which was going to make what she had to do more difficult.

Checking that no one was actually watching her, she walked behind a pile of storage crates and activated her shield. A counter appeared in-vision with an estimate of the time she had available, given the current drain on her reserves. She had had to use the cloaking system for the last hundred metres to the entrance, but the power from that had been recovered already. She had fifty minutes to do what she had to.

Slipping out of cover, she headed for the ship. She still had to be careful of noise, and if anyone bumped into her she was in trouble, but she was pretty sure no one was going to see her. Even lidar and radar, if there had been any operating in the bay, were not going to see anything.

The dangerous part was going to be planting the devices Winter had given her. Five canisters, not large, but they would be visible as soon as they left her hand. She needed them all in place, and out of sight, before she triggered them and got out. And the first was going to be the most difficult. It was to go in the lower warp drive coil, which was opened up and sitting there near the ground. If someone saw that one, the alarm might be raised.

There was a technician working three metres from the lowest run of the coil. She looked bored. Figuring all information was useful, Aneka looked over her shoulder at the tablet she was using and saw what appeared to be conductivity readings occupying the top of the screen, while the bottom showed a crossword.

‘Quantum,’ Al said.

‘Huh?’

‘She’s puzzling over eleven across. The answer is “quantum.”’

‘Do you want to tell her?’

‘I think that might arouse suspicion.’

Moving around to the other side of the drive coil, Aneka found a spot between some cables where she could wedge the canister and pushed it in. It was mostly hidden and the small, flashing light on one edge was hidden. Satisfied, she climbed up the metal framework above and into the belly of the ship.

You could tell that the thing had been cobbled together from technology only half-understood by the designers. The estimates Aneka had seen suggested a mass of around a thousand tonnes, and there should have been plenty of space, but the interior was bunged up with bulky, even over-sized equipment, and the destruction caused in studying the vessel had left even less space to work in.

The cloaking system was not too bad. Hung, as it was, under the central hull, Aneka could crawl across the top, obscured from above and below. She placed two of the canisters amid the vaguely cylindrical machinery and then climbed up into the rear of the hull.

Here she had to wait to allow people to walk past her, watch for projections as she slipped down the corridors, and generally spend more time than was necessary getting into the rear housing of the big gamma-ray laser which ran the length of the ship. One canister went at the front of the generator easily enough, but the second needed to go at the far end, and there was someone working on the control panel there.

Picking up a loose bolt from the floor, she walked closer, taking it slowly to avoid making any sound. When she was right beside him, she got the canister ready, moved her other arm out until it was beyond his peripheral vision, and tossed the bolt into a corner. The man turned away from her to look, and she pushed the canister in behind the panel.

‘Nicely done,’ Al said as they started back the way they had come.

‘It’s not perfect. The light was showing against some of the metalwork. He might see it.’

‘Organics engaged in careful study are rarely so observant.’

‘Yeah, well… I hope we haven’t got one that is.’

She waited until she was walking toward the door to the access tunnel, quite visibly, before she told Al to activate the devices. There were a number of possible reactions to what was about to happen. She was hoping for panic.

~~~

In the gamma-ray generation bay of the Gathor, Donald Mirian had just decided that something was not quite right. There had been a clattering noise, which was odd, but not entirely unheard of in the partially dismantled ship. When he had turned back from investigating that,
something
had changed. He was not sure what the something was, and he had been standing there, frowning at the console he had been examining, for five minutes, and it was not coming to him.

Something seemed to move in the corner of his eye and he looked that way. There was nothing… And then he saw it, a faint, red glow reflecting off metal. Something in the dead ship was alive! The entire ship was basically scrap, as far as they could tell, but he had found something which seemed to be working.

He turned to get a penlight from the bench set up behind him to hold his equipment. That would let him look into the dark space behind the console where the light
had
to be coming from.

When he turned back, the control panel was dissolving in front of his eyes.

High Yorkbridge, New Earth, 2.11.530 FSC.

‘It’s a total loss?’ Pierce asked. He was turning a tumbler of the best whiskey the Federation had to offer in his hand and did not seem especially annoyed.

Part nodded. ‘Nanotechnology of some sort. Fairly basic I’m told, but very effective. It ate its way through pretty much everything aside from the hull plates. We’re currently unsure whether it was sabotage or someone triggered some sort of self-destruct mechanism.’

‘It was sabotage. There is someone with access to very efficient technology who does not want us to gain from our victories. I can guess who.’

‘Winter.’ Part spat the name out and then sank the contents of his own glass in one go.

‘Indeed. This needs to be countered. We need her fighting fires rather than looking carefully at our plans. We need… We need civilian casualties. I think that the Herosians will have to kill a few people on New Earth.’

‘What about your watcher? Truelove?’

‘Oh, I’ll put her in charge of hunting for the terrorists. Just make sure your people leave the right kind of evidence. Odanari, but better. Dear Elaine will be so busy trying to track them down that she won’t be in a position to snoop on me.’

Part gave a grunt, and whether that was in agreement or not was open for debate. ‘Just so you know, I’m asking this to hear the answer, not because I’m having second thoughts… Do we really want to kill Jenlay civilians to keep this lie going?’

‘War is a truth surrounded on all sides by fully armed squads of lies and half-truths, Admiral,’ Pierce replied. ‘What we’re doing on Eshebbon will see to it that the Jenlay come out as the soul inheritors of the Federation, and see to it that those who created that future become very, very rich. The Jenlay will look upon us as saviours by the end of it. History will see us as the men who brought the children of Old Earth to their true position in the galaxy. We will be remembered as veritable
gods
!’

Gareth Part was an arrogant, over-confident, highly self-opinionated man, but even he was starting to wonder whether Pierce was just a little insane.

Tristar Township, 8.11.530 FSC.

It began with something relatively small. Truelove, Janine, and Sharissa came back to the house looking distinctly unhappy, but by then they just needed to supply the details.

‘Someone set off a small bomb in Shin You,’ Truelove told them. ‘I’m sure that’s been all over the news.’

‘Yes,’ Katelyn said, her tone distinctly sour, ‘though there was no one there. There were rumours about the Herosians using biological weapons and it was shut down as a health risk a couple of weeks ago.’

‘Who started the rumour?’ Aneka asked.

‘There was an editorial piece on Front Line News,’ Truelove said. ‘It didn’t actually say “the Herosians have created a virulent, sexually transmitted disease,” but that was one of the speculations made on what
might
happen. So, as you say, no one was hurt.’

‘But now Front Line are portraying this as an attack on the Jenlay lifestyle,’ Ella said.

‘No one ever said that news channels had to be consistent,’ Aneka told her. ‘I get the feeling there’s more to this than the media has got a hold of yet.’

‘Yes,’ Truelove said. ‘It’s being kept quiet “to avoid panic,” but there were various slogans sprayed on the walls. In Herica characters.’

‘Slogans?’ Ella asked.

‘The usual. “Victory for the Herosians.” “All Jenlay will die.” “Death to the oppressors.” Good, solid, terrorist stuff.’

Aneka gave a resigned sigh. ‘How long before it leaks?’

‘I give it another hour. Two tops.’

9.11.530 FSC.

CFN was largely covering the crowd of currently unemployed Jenlay gathering outside the Herosian embassy which still housed the Ambassador and those Herosians who had not managed to leave the planet.

The crowd had begun gathering about an hour after the leak, which had been sixty-eight minutes after Truelove made her prediction, and their demands were simple. A plea for calm and for the crowd to disperse from Elroy had had no effect. The people were speaking, and they would not be denied.

One of the throng had managed to get himself elected spokesman, either by not stepping back fast enough or because he was the kind of loudmouth who had been waiting all his life to be put on camera.

‘The terrorists have to be in there,’ he had said. ‘We want them sent out. Adjaxis must know who they are. We want them sent out so that they can be dealt with. All fair and legal.’

‘Adjaxis will be panicking,’ Aneka said as the reports played out in the background. ‘He seems like the type.’

‘He has a right,’ Ella replied. ‘Communications with Herosian space are cut off. Even if their network is up and running again, I doubt he knows that, and
we
know the Navy has disabled the diplomatic and civil channels. He’s isolated, locked inside his embassy, and there’s a crowd of angry Jenlay massing outside. I’d panic.’

‘No, you wouldn’t. You didn’t.’

Ella looked at her, and then remembered Eshebbon. ‘Oh, I suppose I didn’t.’

Eshebbon.

Daniella Bishop opened her eyes and, for a second, could not work out why she was not looking at the ceiling of her bedroom. Her room was all warm reds, sensual colours. This was white, very white. Antiseptic.

She remembered the man on the beach. He had shot her with an energy weapon. She remembered pain and then nothing. The man had shot Melissa with the same weapon. A blaster, she decided, set to incapacitate.

The question then became one of where she had been taken after blacking out and the only way she was going to find out more was to look at something other than the ceiling. She turned, swinging long legs off the edge of the narrow bed.

The remainder of the room was just as white as the ceiling, except for one wall. The clinical, almost scientific appearance was continued by the use of white Adanymax panels in the walls and the stainless steel of the toilet and sink which were in there with her. It reminded her of a cell. She was in a cell, and it had one transparent wall. She checked herself to be sure and found that she was still naked. Whoever had put her there had no desire to preserve her dignity, but then Daniella had no dignity to speak of. She got to her feet and moved closer to the clear wall.

The cell was one of many. She could see one opposite, and more stretching out on either side. But in the opposite cell was a man, a Jenlay she did not recognise. She would know him if she saw him again, that was a certainty. He looked… like a dead man who could not cope with that as a concept and so was sitting in the middle of the floor, rocking slowly. His skin had a grey quality, his eyes were yellow, and his thin lips were shrinking back to show dull-coloured teeth.

As she approached the window, he seemed to notice the movement. His head lifted, he saw her standing there, and he was all action. He rushed toward her, slamming into the Polyglass as though he simply did not realise it was there. He let out a howl and slammed his fists against the barrier, trying desperately to get to her. Daniella decided that she would prefer it if he failed in his endeavour.

‘You’re safe,’ a voice said, coming to her over speakers in the room. The man who had spoken was in the corridor outside her cell, dressed in a white coat over an Ultraskin bodysuit. He looked like a doctor. ‘He can’t get out.’

‘I know.’ Reaching out, Daniella tapped the wall in front of her. ‘Armoured Polyglass. My brother builds starships. What’s wrong with that man?’

‘We used him in an experiment. We need test subjects. We are re-engineering a complex viral agent and we need to be sure it doesn’t affect Jenlay.’

‘You haven’t got it right then.’

‘No, not yet. We’ll keep trying. We have plenty more people to test it on.’

Daniella nodded, unconcerned. ‘I’m going to end up like that.’

‘If your brother does as he’s told, no. If not, you get the next dose.’

She gave another nod and turned away from the window.

‘You don’t appear concerned about your fate,’ the man said, his brow wrinkling a little.

Daniella curled up on the bed, facing the wall. ‘I’ve had worse things done to me,’ she said before closing her eyes.

Tristar Township, New Earth, 11.11.530 FSC.

The next bomb detonated outside the museum in High Yorkbridge. It was early and there were few people about, and the device was designed to injure rather than kill, but the news was full of it.

Aneka watched the videos, knowing the likely result, and she was not disappointed. By midday the crowd outside the Herosian embassy had doubled in size and was a lot louder about its demands for the terrorists to be brought out for ‘justice’ to be served.

Adjaxis went so far as to issue a statement that he knew nothing of any Herosian insurgents who might be operating on New Earth, but that had been reported only on CFM, once. No one wanted to hear the truth, and Aneka doubted the Herosian would know what the truth was if it bit him anyway.