Aneka Jansen 5: The Greatest Heights of Honour (17 page)

‘Yeah, but that gives Dowler ten full days of unrestricted mayhem.’

Justine frowned and then appeared to come to a decision. ‘I’m going to make a call,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back shortly.’ She walked down to the end of the yard, keeping her distance from Shannon.

‘Who’s she going to call?’ Truelove asked.

Aneka looked over toward the dark-haired woman. ‘If I said “Ghostbusters” neither of you would get the joke anyway.’

~~~

It was getting quite late when the three women arrived at Gillian’s house. One of them was a short-haired brunette with dark eyes and a compact, muscular body dressed in a tight-fitting bodysuit and a long coat which hid the array of weapons she was carrying. The other two were hidden under hooded cloaks. They walked silently into the lounge of Gillian’s house to be stared at by the entire crew of the Garnet Hyde, and Janna, Sharissa, and Truelove.

The brunette moved over to the window where she looked like she was standing guard. Her two companions stood beside Justine who, along with Aneka and Ella, was one of the few people who seemed to have a clue what was going on.

‘We’re safe,’ the brunette said.

Justine nodded. ‘Nothing we say in the next little while leaves this room. It’s important. I mean, we’re trusting you with this, but it’s not a safe thing to know. By now Dowler will think none of you know, but still… Anyone who thinks they can’t handle that should probably leave. No questions asked.’

No one moved, or said anything, until Truelove asked, ‘What’s going on, Justine?’

‘I think we’d all like to know that,’ Drake added.

‘Okay…’ Justine said. ‘When you first saw me, Elaine, you recognised me. I’d talked to you before, but I acted as if we’d never met, yes?’

‘I thought it was a little odd, but we are, basically, spies.’

‘Actually,
I
had never met you. She did.’

The woman standing beside her pushed back her cowl to reveal another Justine, smiling, perfect in every detail. ‘Hello again, Elaine,’ she said, and the voice was a perfect match.

‘A… twin?’ Bashford said. ‘A clone?’

‘Clone is closer,’ Aneka said, ‘but these two are actually more different than, say, the new Justine and that brunette over there.’

‘I’m not getting this,’ Truelove said.

‘Yeah, well,’ Aneka replied, ‘she’s always had a bit of a flair for the over-dramatic revelation.’

‘Who?!’ It came from more than one mouth.

‘Aneka is referring to me.’ The second hooded figure revealed her face. There were the expected gasps. Winter, the Winter most of the people there
knew
had been killed by a sniper’s bullet to the head, was standing there, in Gillian’s front room, large as life. ‘I think Aneka should make the introductions,’ she said.

‘Thanks,’ Aneka responded. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is Sleep Brings Renewal to All Things, but you can call all of them Winter, except for Justine Nivalis there. She’s actually a little different.’

There was silence for a second and then Truelove said, ‘I’m still a little confused.’

‘Sleep Brings Renewal to All Things was the AI the Xinti built to supervise the Human Uplift programme, Elaine,’ Gillian said. ‘She left Negral before the Federation was founded and… Well, apparently she helped found the Federation.’ She looked at Winter. ‘Am I wrong? You actually
were
Xenia Winter?’

‘You are not wrong, Doctor,’ Winter replied. ‘I’ve been using bodies like this one, avatars if you will, to run the FSA ever since.’

‘Which is why you seem to be able to get to wherever you’re needed so quickly,’ Drake said.

‘And it explains why your memory is so good,’ Truelove added.

Winter smiled. ‘After recent events I’ve had to retire this body. I brought it out because, frankly, I thought this was the only way you’d believe me. Now I’m using nine different forms, plus Justine here on occasion. Elaine’s Justine ran my safe house on Odanari for several years and did not get the periodic resynchronisation the others are subject to. She has a unique mind and I could not bring myself to terminate it when her job was done.’

‘A safe house on Odanari?’ Janna said. ‘Is that where you had my daughter hidden when they were supposedly in a cabin in a forest?’

‘Yeah,’ Ella said. ‘And that’s why me and Aneka knew about this. Sort of. I mean, Aneka’s sort of Winter’s daughter… In a very obscure way.’

‘All right,’ Drake said. ‘We accepted the other AIs from Negral, so I guess we can accept you, but why are you telling us this now?’

‘Because you are the only people I’m quite sure I can trust with the information,’ Winter replied, ‘and I’ll quite possibly need your trust in the future. The first step in trust is not keeping a rather important secret. And because I need Elaine to keep doing her job, and to know
why
she needs to keep doing it.’

‘I can’t back down now,’ Truelove said. ‘I’d just look weak.’

‘Quite true. You’re absolutely right that you need Elroy to come back and lay down the law. I expect him to be fairly sarcastic about what’s been happening without him and Ollander to keep things in check. You need to keep to your current position, but I think you’re going to need help.’

‘Uh… what kind of help?’

FSA Headquarters, High Yorkbridge, 8.1.529 FSC.

Dowler was smiling as he walked into his outer office. He stopped as soon as the door opened.

Truelove was there, siting at her desk and apparently very busy, but she was not alone. Sharissa Torrence was peering over her shoulder intently and a man from Internal Affairs, Grant Hoffman, was leaning against the wall watching them both. As Dowler moved into the room he glanced to the left and saw Justine sitting there, as always. She was watching Dowler.

‘Agent Truelove,’ Dowler said. Suddenly everyone was looking at him. ‘I understood you had resigned. Do I need to have you escorted from the building?’

‘That would be illegal, sir,’ Hoffman said. ‘According to regulations, Agent Truelove’s compilation of a final report requires that she do so with the supervision of the Security and Internal Affairs departments.’

‘We’ll also be supervising her handover to her replacement,’ Sharissa said, ‘and
all
activities in this office until she leaves.’

‘I see,’ Dowler said, trying and failing to keep the displeasure out of his voice. ‘I assume Agent Nivalis will be reassigned…’

‘Agent Truelove is still a member of this Agency
and
subject to the same strictures as before,’ Sharissa interrupted. ‘Now that she has resigned, Agent Nivalis will also be providing me with detailed reports of Agent Truelove’s activities outside the office.’

Dowler remained silent, marching past the little group and into his office.

Sharissa waited for the door to close before leaning forward and whispering into Truelove’s ear. ‘I’m looking forward to the reports. I haven’t read any decent porn in ages.’

Truelove went back to her work, trying very hard not to blush.

Downtown Yorkbridge, 15.1.529 FSC.

Aneka and Ella found a tall, slim, blonde woman sitting in a booth at the back of a bar which tried its best to look sleazy. That was the image the place was trying to project, though it somehow managed to come across as glossy with a dirty sheen. It did offer a sense of privacy, and Winter had undoubtedly swept the booth for bugging devices before selecting it.

‘Your message sounded urgent,’ Aneka said as she slid onto the bench beside the blonde.

‘It’s… urgent in a way,’ Winter replied.

‘Cryptic as usual.’

‘Sorry. I received some information yesterday which I need to follow up on personally.’

Ella frowned at her from across the table. ‘Personally as in…?’

‘I’m leaving the system. I’ll be out of contact for a while. Obviously I’ll still have avatars here, but…’

Aneka was frowning too. ‘Winter,’ she said through gritted teeth, ‘this is a really bad time to be running off chasing…’

‘I am aware of that, Aneka, but this… I can’t tell you what it is I’m looking into, but it
is
important. Possibly very important. If the Herosians have started a war, this could change the course of it.’

‘How long?’ Aneka sighed.

‘I’ll be out of touch for a couple of months, maybe longer depending on what I find.’

‘You can’t wait a couple of days to find out what happened on Obati?’

There was a tiny pause, probably too short for Ella to even notice it. Aneka did not think Winter already knew the answer, but her real brain, sitting in the core of a ship in the outer system, was a computer of incredible power capable of very complex, very detailed simulations. She had almost certainly run the numbers.

‘This cannot wait,’ Winter said. ‘This is going to be a slow war. The distances involved make moving large numbers of ships difficult. If my information is correct we’ll need all the time we can get to make use of it.’

Aneka nodded. ‘It isn’t like we can stop you.’

Ella reached across the table, clasping her hands over Winter’s. ‘Good luck,’ she said softly.

Yorkbridge Mid-town, 16.1.529 FSC.

‘Elroy should be in the system tomorrow,’ Ella said, trying to sound as bright as possible.

‘Uh-huh,’ Aneka replied.

They were watching the news broadcast on CFM again. None of it was good. The protests outside the Herosian embassy continued to burst into sporadic violence. Herosian businesses had been attacked several times, as well as a couple of homes. People had died in those. So far there had been half a dozen arrests, but Aneka had started to notice a pattern; the arrested individuals all seemed to be copycats, people who had seen the previous attacks and followed suit. None of the people responsible for the deaths had been caught.

‘He can fix this,’ Ella suggested.

‘He might be able to fix some of it. Some of it is going to be hanging around for years. I almost hope there’s an actual war, otherwise some citizens are going to be feeling pretty stupid.’

‘You don’t really want a war.’

‘I don’t really want a war. I don’t really want this to be going on either, but this is what we’ve got.’

Ella sat in silence for a few minutes, watching the silent screen.

‘There’s nothing we can really do, is there?’ the redhead said.

‘Not really.’

‘I mean, there was Hunter and Humanity First, and you killed them. And there was Ardus Quint, and you killed him. And Yrimtan, and even those little things that attacked us on Idridia…’

‘There’s no one I can shoot to make this go away, love.’

There was more silence and then, ‘Maybe we could blow them up this time?’

Aneka barked out a laugh despite herself, yanked Ella into her lap, and kissed her. ‘I tell you what, if I can find someone to blow up, that’s just what we’ll do.’

FDCV Senator Alfresson, 17.1.529 FSC.

The intercom chimed for attention and Jackson Elroy leaned across his desk to tap the response button. ‘Speak,’ he snapped.

‘Sir, we dropped out of warp two minutes ago. We are ninety-two minutes out from dock.’ The speaker was the diplomatic yacht’s captain, an experienced man who was quite used to ferrying Elroy back and forth. The Senator’s temper never usually bothered him, but he sounded nervous. ‘We’re getting transmissions through from New Earth Control… I think you should see this.’

Frowning, Elroy flicked his monitor over to show the feeds the ship was receiving from the planet. After a second he transferred the feeds to his wall screen and his frown deepened. Then he hit the intercom button again. ‘I want Elaine Truelove waiting for me at the spaceport. Send the message now.’ He cut off the intercom without waiting for a reply and turned back to the screens, and his mood just got worse.

The Islands, New Earth.

‘We’ve heard nothing at all from Obati since the Renewal?’ Elroy asked. The tall, distinguished politician was staring out of the window of his lounge, apparently at a lounger that was set up beside the pool. His anger had abated as Truelove had explained the current situation, but there was something disquieting him.

‘No, sir,’ Truelove replied. ‘If it’s simply a failure in the high-speed relay system, then we
might
have heard something by now, but tomorrow is more likely.’

Elroy drew in a slow breath and turned from the window. ‘All right. I need you to rescind your resignation, effective immediately. I’ll put through the necessary paperwork to countermand the committee’s recommendations and put through an order to have the remainder of the clean-up operation completed.’

‘Sir, I’m not entirely sure that the telepaths have managed to find everyone who has been subverted.’

‘No, but finishing the programme will severely cripple their operations and we can work to discover any other moles the hard way. I would also be grateful if you could send a request through to the Old Earth vessel. I’d like to receive their representative here, if she’s willing to come down. Extend an invitation to Aneka Jansen and Ella Narrows to join me. I don’t want too big a meeting. If we’re going to get formal I’d prefer to throw a ball of some kind.’

‘I’ll get that arranged, sir. There will need to be security…’

Elroy waved away the suggestion. ‘Tell Aneka she can bring her guns. My normal security detail should be quite sufficient with her here.’

Truelove’s lips twitched. ‘Of course, sir.’

18.1.529 FSC.

‘I wasn’t expecting you to bring
that,
’ Elroy said as Aneka put her rifle case down beside the couch.

‘Elaine said you were foregoing a more extensive security detail because I was here,’ Aneka replied. ‘If I’m on protection detail, you get the full package.’ She patted the other case she had put down first, a squatter one in metal. ‘I brought Bessie as well as the two machine pistols.’

‘Bessie is her antimatter blaster,’ Ella commented as she sat down and crossed her legs. ‘Aneka is a one-woman army.’

‘Are you expecting to need them?’ Abby asked, eyes wide at the sheer quantity of armament.

‘No,’ Aneka stated. ‘I didn’t expect to need any of them to herd sheep either.’