Aneka Jansen 5: The Greatest Heights of Honour (32 page)

‘They were really pissed when they got here, weren’t they?’ Aneka commented.

‘Right at this moment, I can’t say I blame them.’ The redhead’s fingers moved over the keyboard, but she was frowning. ‘I think I’m getting some concentrations of refined materials which could be artificial satellites, but we need to get closer.’

Aneka nodded, her attention shifting to the flight data she was seeing in a separate display. They were ten light-minutes outside the system’s outer edge. She had dropped them out of warp there because even with the stealth field engaged exiting within the system was likely to get them noticed. She ran the calculations.

‘We’re about seven hours from that outer belt at full acceleration.’

Ella was busy with her own estimates. ‘We’ll let the sensors run on for four and then see what we have. That gives us three to make final plans for entry. If we had a science sensor package instead of tactical, we could probably know something sooner…’

‘I will mention that to War when we return to Shadataga,’ Gwy said from the room’s speakers. ‘A multi-function system could be installed.’

Ella gave the room a grin. ‘I’m hoping we won’t need to sneak into heavily defended solar systems again, personally.’

‘Indeed,’ the AI replied, ‘but it would be nice to feel useful for other purposes when we are done here.’

‘You will be,’ Aneka told her. ‘Let’s go lie down. That acceleration isn’t huge, but it’s going to be annoying after a few hours.’

Nodding, Ella got to her feet and then had to brace herself against the desk to keep steady. ‘Wow. I’ve never felt that much force through an inertial compensator. You have
really
powerful engines, Gwy.’

‘Thank you, Ella,’ the AI responded, sounding pleased. ‘For my size I do have quite some push. The apparent acceleration is around half of one standard gravity. I hope it does not cause too much discomfort.’

‘Discomfort, no,’ Aneka said, ‘but trying to do anything active while vertical is going to be difficult.’

‘Then we’d better find something active to do while we’re horizontal,’ Ella replied, smiling sweetly.

~~~

‘We have been monitoring the sensor readings,’ Al said as the model of the Herosia system appeared above the bed. ‘As Ella indicated, there is evidence of artificial objects in the system.’

Aneka and Ella watched as several clumps of one of the asteroid belts lit up to indicate the regions Al was referring to. There were three of them, one significantly larger than the others, situated in a belt about nine-and-a-half AUs from the system’s star.

‘At this range,’ Gwy added, ‘the detail is light, but we have identified at least one battleship in the larger cluster. Matching our data to the data from the probe, we are confident that the situation here has not changed drastically since our last recorded mapping.’

‘And the asteroid we’re aiming for?’ Aneka asked.

‘Is, unfortunately, part of the larger cluster.’

‘Right.’ Aneka checked her flight data. They had turned to decelerate for the outer edge of the system, but that was going to put them over ten AUs from their eventual destination. ‘Change course. Take us above the plane of the system, aim for an AU above that cluster in a matched orbit.’

Almost immediately there was a shift in the acceleration as Gwy cut back her engines, turned the ship around, and began accelerating again.

Ella sighed. ‘More time on my back,’ she said.

Aneka giggled. ‘You’ve never complained about
that
before.’

‘Yeah… But I want to get this over with. We’re so close now…’

Aneka nodded. ‘This is when the tension starts getting to you.’ She glanced at her partner. ‘Surely that orbit can’t be where Herosia was?’

Ella looked up at the display. ‘No. It was the fourth of those belts, about one-point-one AUs out. They must actually be viewing it as a sort of war grave or memorial. I mean, they’d be in space anyway, but the closer orbit would let them use more solar power and they’d get some natural light. Maybe they aren’t
quite
as crass as we thought.’

‘Everyone has their limits. Didn’t Gillian want you to run scans if you had time?’

‘You’re trying to keep me busy.’

‘Uh-huh. Just for a bit. Then we’ll do something else to keep busy, and then we’ll have a shower, and then we’ll be in a position to make a tactical plan.’

Ella sighed. ‘Okay… Gwy, would you give me the data you’ve collected so far and keep it coming? Let’s see if there’s anything interesting out there.’

~~~

‘There’s definitely evidence of the final battle,’ Ella said as she highlighted various regions of the system via her implant. ‘These are debris fields. They’re what’s left of the ships destroyed in the fighting.’

‘They look pretty thin,’ Aneka commented.

‘They are. I think they’ve been farming them for materials for centuries. The thinnest patches are also the ones which contain the most exotic matter forms.’

‘The Herosians have been grabbing whatever materials they could from Xinti debris.’

‘Uh-huh. I’d say that explains the lousy quality of their frigate hulls.’

‘I concur,’ Al agreed.

‘Recycling the collapsed matter used in hulls like mine,’ Gwy put in, ‘requires
very
fine gravity manipulation technology. Even the Xinti found it difficult a thousand years ago. Where hull repairs were required, they would generally replace the section rather than attempting to seal it.’

‘It’s weird though,’ Ella went on. ‘I mean, this lot are trying to recycle it, which implies they have trouble making it at all. There’s a very large construction facility…’ She highlighted one of the areas they had identified earlier. ‘It’s got a
lot
of heavy equipment.
Huge
power systems. The sensors are registering anomalous gravity readings, big ones.’

‘Substituting brute force for fine control?’ Aneka suggested.

‘Possibly. But where did they even learn to do that? If they’d found a Xinti construction site surely they’d have better techniques. And there’s the lack of reactionless drives. It’s all… a bit weird.’

Aneka grinned. ‘Is that a technical term?’

Ella smirked. ‘The observed technology exhibits anomalous development patterns.’

‘You mean it’s a bit weird?’

‘Yeah. It’s like someone
really
clever has been reverse engineering Xinti tech for a millennium. They’ve got some of it right, but they aren’t entirely sure what they’re doing.’

‘Herosians aren’t exactly long-lived,’ Aneka said.

‘And they aren’t noted for their genius-level intelligence either,’ Ella agreed. ‘I think there’s something going on here we don’t know about.’

‘Huh… What about gaining entry to the asteroid?’

‘I have detected fairly regular shuttle traffic between it and the other stations in that area,’ Gwy said. ‘I believe your best course of action would be to hitch a ride on one of those. With Ella piloting, I believe we can move in undetected, drop you off on a shuttle, and you can ride it into the hangar bay.’

‘It sounds like the best way in without tripping any alarms,’ Aneka agreed. ‘Think you’re up for it, love?’

‘I think so. Maybe we could run some simulations. How long before we’re in position?’

‘It will be early tomorrow before we arrive at the designated target location,’ Gwy supplied.

Ella sighed. ‘Being able to warp into a system is really much more convenient, isn’t it? At least we’ll have time for some practice.’

2.2.530 FSC.

Ella’s lips formed a thin line as she guided Gwy toward one of the Herosian shuttles. It had a thirty-minute flight time and it had been flying for seven minutes, but her main concern was that Aneka was currently clinging to the outside of the ship without an air supply.

Not, she reminded herself, that Aneka needed an external air supply the way she did. Somewhere in Aneka’s chassis her body stored oxygen which her semi-organic components used when she could not breathe. Thinking about it, no one had ever explained where the oxygen was actually stored. Ella had this theory: there had to be a reason aside from aesthetics for that increase in cup size…

In front of Ella the virtual display highlighted the shuttle. Light out here was not exactly bright, but the ship’s sensors were making the most of it. Besides, the thermal signature from the fusion engines was bright enough, even when they were not burning, to make the small vessel easily detectable.

Along with the highlighted visuals, Gwy was displaying the current projected flight path. Ella lifted the nose slightly, raising the line of glowing rectangles which showed where she was going.

‘We will pass a little more than ten metres from the upper hull of the shuttle at this trajectory,’ Gwy stated.

‘That’s close enough,’ Aneka said, her voice relayed in through Ella’s connection to the ship. ‘Probably a little
too
close.’

‘You make the jump and I’ll pull away,’ Ella replied firmly. She was not going to take risks with Aneka’s life at this stage. If the shuttle detected her, and she was pretty sure it would not, at least Gwy had a good chance of getting clear. If Aneka missed the jump then getting her back was going to be a lot harder. ‘Range, Gwy?’

‘Seven hundred metres,’ the AI replied. ‘We are closing at fifty-eight metres per second.’

‘Twelve seconds, sheelee,’ Ella said. ‘You be careful. Make contact once you’re inside.’

‘No problem, love. I’m wearing the ultimate in Xinti adaptive camouflage, remember. I’ll be fine.’

‘You’d better be. If you get yourself killed I’ll murder you. And you know I don’t react well to having to kill people.’

‘Just make sure I’ve got you and Gwy to come back to, okay? I don’t want to have to float back home.’

Ella watched the flight path display vanish in front of her as the distance closed and applied some braking thrust to slow Gwy’s closing speed.

‘Five seconds,’ Gwy announced. ‘Relative velocity twenty-three metres per second… fifteen… Go now, Aneka.’

‘Love you, Ella,’ Aneka said, and then the connection was cut.

Ella bit her lip, counted to ten, and then pushed up and away from the shuttle. With a hundred metres between the two ships she pulled the nose up and put more power into the reactionless drive, accelerating out of the cluster of stations which formed the military complex Aneka was infiltrating.

‘Aneka has successfully attached herself to the outer hull of the shuttle,’ Gwy told her.

‘All right. Give me a flight plan to our holding position and then get the comms system lined up.’ Immediately another set of guide rectangles appeared ahead of her and Ella adjusted the ship’s attitude to follow them.

‘Your heart rate and breathing are elevated, Ella,’ Gwy told her. ‘I understand your anxiety, but you should try to remain calm. Aneka is very good at this kind of operation. She will succeed.’

‘It’s not quite that easy for us organics, Gwy. When someone we have feelings for is in danger, we tend to get anxious.’

‘Don’t worry. I am quite sure that you will soon be making all those strange noises in my cabin again.’

‘I hope so,’ Ella said, her voice soft. ‘I
really
hope so.’

~~~

Aneka lay with her body pressed as close to the hull of the shuttle as she could manage, holding on via a device which gripped the smooth metal using molecular bonding. She was pretty sure it would hold onto the ship; her only worry was that she might fail to hold onto it, but the little craft she was riding was incapable of sharp acceleration so she was probably safe.

‘Do we have an estimate on flight time?’ she asked silently.

‘An estimate, yes,’ Al replied. ‘Based on the distance we had left to travel and the time we have been here, I estimate another five minutes before we reach the hangar bay.’

‘Right.’ It felt like she had been there for an hour, but it was more like fifteen minutes. She looked up and could see little aside from the lights on the shuttle. The asteroid was dark; composed of matte black rock which reflected little in the way of light. But there was something out there blocking her view of the stars. Something almost two hundred metres in length, massing a hundred thousand tonnes or so. She lowered her face back to the metal.

They knew too little about the interior of the asteroid. It had some fairly extensive communication systems and the sensors on the probe suggested that there was a heavy layer of exotic matter hidden away under the rocky exterior. There was evidence of weaponry; extended observation had shown what appeared to be beam weapon turrets, but no sign of any missile launchers of the type Aneka had programmed into her simulation. The hangar bay was at one end of the slightly irregular, lozenge-shaped object. Aside from that, however, the interior was a mystery.

In preparation for that mystery, Aneka was going in loaded for bear. A camouflaged pack on her back contained her two machine pistols, ten implosion mines, a rather special communicator, and a specialised computer which was going to deliver the virus into the asteroid’s communications system. Hopefully that was going to be enough. The difficult bit was going to be figuring out where she needed to be to use any of it.

‘I’m picking up traffic between the shuttle and the asteroid,’ Al informed her. ‘Standard approach chatter, but there is one interesting thing: the asteroid’s codename is apparently “Summer Retreat.”’

‘Kind of an odd name for an asteroid in a system without planets. Then again, someone could say, “I’m going to my summer retreat,” and no one would understand the reference.’

‘Given how hot most Herosian worlds are, a summer retreat would likely be somewhere a little cooler. We’ll be entering the bay in around a minute.’

Aneka looked up again in time to see a large section of the rocky hull opening outward. Two blocks of stone were hinging out on thick supports to reveal the dimly lit space beyond. There was one flashing navigation light visible and that seemed to be where the shuttle was headed. She could just about make out some structures: docking tubes, what looked like an observation deck with slightly brighter lighting showing through a window, and there were a couple of figures moving about.