The Cold Steel Mind (2 page)

Right now he was smiling wolfishly at her. ‘My dear Miss Jansen, please don’t keep us waiting any longer. I’m anxious to discover what delights await us beyond the airlock.

‘It’s fully pressurised in there,’ Bashford added. ‘All the seals are holding. Hull integrity checks out.’ That was impressive. Aneka had been imprisoned on the ship after its fusion reactor had suffered a catastrophic failure which had ripped a hole in the hull. The patch over that hole was basically a heavy plastic sheet.

‘Let’s get on with this then,’ Aneka said, switching to Federal for their benefit and pushing past the men to the inner hatch of the second bridging tube. This one had a coded, electronic lock on it rather than a physical lever to move. There was some possibility that there could be something dangerous still in the Agroa Gar and this was the security system that was supposed to stop it getting out. Frankly the chance was so small as to be essentially nothing, but people were cautious around Xinti artefacts. Aneka punched in a four digit code and Al reported that her personal identification had been requested. Every Federal citizen had a tiny ident-chip implanted in them which responded to radio requests. Aneka’s built-in systems mimicked that protocol.

There was no actual airlock. Beyond the doors was a tube around ten metres in length with a seam halfway along its length. This was held together with explosive bolts, another safety measure. The Agroa Gar could be blown free of the station at any time from the station’s control room or the Garnet Hyde’s flight deck. It all seemed a little overdone to Aneka, considering that the vessel had been dead in space for over a thousand years. The far end of the tube was locked onto the hull of the Xinti ship, encircling the main airlock. The outer doors of that were open, and Wallace and Bashford had spent a few hours earlier that day disengaging the safety systems so that the inner doors would open without the outer doors closing. Aneka floated through and hit the door release, and then she was back in the main corridor of her ancient tomb.

‘Welcome to my resting place for most of the last twelve hundred years,’ she said. ‘I hope it’s going to be as interesting for you as you all seem to hope it will be.’

~~~

In truth, the ‘initial survey’ had been far less detailed than Wallace had wished for fairly practical reasons. There was almost no light on the derelict vessel and actually seeing what there was to see was far from easy, even in the bright torches Bash had handed out. The physical scientist had seen the state of the reactor room and the drive room visible through a damaged bulkhead and stated that the first order of business was getting light into the place. That was not actually happening, because Gillian was the archaeologist and she had stated flatly that the first thing that would be happening was a full lidar survey of the ship. After that he could have his lights.

And that was why there were just two people aboard the Agroa Gar right now: Aneka, and a new member of the team who had been brought in for two good reasons. Right now Delta Ling was demonstrating one of those reasons as she assisted Aneka in prying open one of the doors on the port side of the ship. Born on a world with one-point-six times the standard gravity, Delta was tall and built like an Amazon. Aneka had been told that high gravity tended to reduce height so how tall the girl would have been if born on New Earth was anyone’s guess. Her muscles were not extreme exactly, but she was certainly built more on the lines of an Olympic weightlifter than a supermodel. Counterpointing a body of the ‘cracks walnuts with her buttocks’ type, her face was pretty to the point of cute, and kind of young. Delta was the first person Aneka had met since waking up who was actually her age; Aneka had been twenty-nine when she was kidnapped, Delta was thirty-one. She seemed a bit shy, and certainly could have made more of her looks. Her hair was a slightly messy cap of red-brown and back on New Earth she had been dressed in rather frumpy exercise clothing whenever Aneka had seen her.

Right now she had the shipsuit working for her. Her muscles bulged under the semi-transparent Ultraskin as she worked on the door. The lightweight helmet she was wearing to protect against dust and other contaminants obscured much of her face, however. Aneka imagined that Monkey, the remaining facilitator on the team, was wishing he was there to watch. Aneka was dressed in her usual leotard, leggings, and boots, having no need for the suit or mask, and her muscles were also rippling as she pulled on a pry bar. Monkey found Aneka attractive and would have slept with her except that his father had told him stories for years about Xinti combat machines. Delta, on the other hand, was a strong, attractive woman, and Monkey was in love. Unfortunately for him, she appeared not to have noticed and he was far too shy of women he liked to say anything.

This was despite the fact that they were sharing a cabin! There had been some rearrangement of accommodation on the Garnet Hyde since Aneka’s last trip aboard her. Wallace had been moved into what had been Gillian’s cabin. It was not a question of seniority or anything; Gillian had moved in with Bashford. They had not made their relationship even vaguely official, and Aneka got the impression this was more of a renewal of a former state than a new thing, but they had decided not to bother hiding the fact that they were more than just colleagues. Wallace’s assistant, Cassandra, had moved into Shannon’s cabin since the telepath was usually in Drake’s. Shannon had her own room as far from the others as possible because she sometimes needed to be alone with her own thoughts. Having Cassandra in the room with her was not an issue, however, since Cassandra was a sentient android and Shannon could no more read her than she could Aneka. Aneka and Ella were in the same place they had always been in, which practically meant that the upper bunk in their room never got used.

‘It’s giving,’ Delta grunted, and then she was flying backwards as the door did, indeed, break free. Neither she nor Aneka actually went far; the ship was in zero gravity, and the only thing keeping them anchored to the deck was the setae strip on the soles of their boots. Delta’s thigh muscles bunched as she did her best to control her momentum.

‘It gave,’ Aneka agreed. ‘That’s the last one, isn’t it?’

Delta was shifting her weight to push the door open the rest of the way. Reactive controls released the nanofibre bonds on her boots, letting her move to a new position where she pressed back down to re-engage the ‘molecular glue,’ and then applied herself to sliding the door open the rest of the way. ‘Yeah, I think so. We’ve opened…’ She stopped to let out a grunt of effort as the door stuck, ‘…every door and panel we could find.’

Aneka looked past her, into the room. Several pairs of articulated arms hung limply from the ceiling, each ending in a set of heavy, padded manacles. Below each limb was a similar one sprouting from and lying on the floor. A flicker of memory, of being held in those cuffs, naked, vulnerable, and waiting to be taken for examination, passed through her mind.

‘You really spent a thousand plus years in this place?’ Delta asked.

‘I was unconscious for pretty much all of it. In a big tube on the other side of the ship.’

The light shifted as Delta moved her head. ‘Let’s get out of here. This ship gives me the creeps. I’m amazed you aren’t freaking out. Though, I guess you’re not… uh… Well, you wouldn’t… uh…’

‘I’m quite capable of freaking out, Delta. My mind’s no different than it was. Which is the point. I was trained
not
to get scared in tense environments.’

Delta gave her an embarrassed grin. ‘I’ll get used to, well, you eventually.’

‘Everyone else we’ve told has.’ Aneka was pretty sure that it was not prejudice that was giving Delta problems. The other reason she was on the team was that she was a robotics technician. No, Delta’s problem was that she just could not get the hang of a robot who had once been a living woman. She could handle people, and robots, but not both in the same package. She was still not quite sure which to treat Aneka as.

Unlocking their boots they headed for the airlock. ‘I think,’ Delta said as they went, ‘I think I’d have gone
fafung
if someone had done to me what they did to you.’

‘
Fafung
?’

‘Sorry, it’s Rimmic. Mad, nuts, insane.’

‘Ah… Maybe. I’m not sure why I didn’t.’ Aneka grinned. ‘Ella keeps coming out with random Rimmic words. They always sound a little like Chinese.’

‘I wouldn’t know. I’m not fully fluent in it. A lot of the immigrants to Drahain spoke it so it paid to learn.’

‘Drahain? Your home world?’

‘High Drahain, technically. It’s a core world, but there’s a lot of mining, so a lot of immigrant miners. The natives don’t like it, but they’d rather not get their hands dirty so they have to live with it.’

‘Immigrant workers and robots?’

‘Huh? Oh, my skill set? Mostly I worked on powered exoskeletons. They’re essentially mindless robots. The basic mechanics and the skills required for full robots are the same.’

‘Fair enough.’ Silently Aneka patched her internal comms through to the station. ‘Jansen to Bashford. We’re done and heading back, Bash. You can start the scans any time.’

Bashford’s voice sounded in her head a second later. ‘Monkey and I will have the drones ready when you get to the door.’

‘Should we radio ahead?’ Delta asked. ‘Doctor Wallace seemed anxious to get things moving.’

Aneka grinned. ‘I just did.’

There was a nervous giggle. ‘Right. Internal radio. That’s something else I’ll have to get used to.’

Four small robots, each powered along by four ducted turbofans, swept out past the two women as the airlock door opened. One took up station near the door while the others carried on into the ship. On the other side of the door was Monkey, looking slightly uncomfortable.

He was good-looking, like everyone was, with a smoothly muscled, if slim, body. He took after his father, a Captain in the Navy, in most ways, except for build; Ape Gibbons was a huge man. To differentiate himself, David, who everyone called Monkey, had an unruly mop of black hair which threatened to cover his eyes, and an attempt at a goatee beard. Ape shaved his head as well as his chin. Monkey’s mother had apparently provided his size: she was Gillian Gilroy.

‘Come on through,’ Monkey said. ‘Bash’s waiting in the control room to start the scan.’

Delta pushed ahead, past Monkey, and Aneka noted the slight flush around her cheeks as she passed. Sooner or later the two of them were bound to notice they were attracted to each other.

‘Surely the bulge in his shipsuit should be a giveaway,’ Al commented.

Aneka had learned not to laugh aloud when her AI made comments like that. She just said, ‘Shut up, you,’ inside her mind and followed Delta through into the station. Her skin sensors noted the flicker of an imaging lidar beam that hit her just before the door closed; Bashford had kicked off the scan.

‘Bash says you two are off duty until we start rigging the lights,’ Monkey added. ‘Ella said she’d see you in your cabin, Aneka.’

Which meant the redhead was horny. ‘Thanks, Monkey,’ Aneka replied and started off through the station. Monkey followed them, but peeled off at the control room leaving the two women to carry on through to the Garnet Hyde.

‘I wish these suits weren’t so…’ Delta began, pausing to consider what she disliked about them.

‘Translucent? Figure-hugging?’ Aneka supplied.

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, they wouldn’t provide the pressure support needed without the latter and I’m told the transparency is to allow medical sensors to work through them.’

‘I know. I know
why
they’re made this way. I just wish they didn’t need to be.’

It was kind of rare to find a Jenlay who was… prudish. ‘You could probably wear something over it.’

Delta grimaced. ‘I’m trying to fit in. You’re not even from this time and that suit of yours is mostly transparent
and
skimpy.’ It was, that was true; the Ultraskin suit was bi-toned, black and steel-grey, and variously translucent. The hips were cut high and it was sleeveless, but the fact was that you could see pretty much everything under it anyway.

Aneka gave a short laugh. ‘Yeah, well… I was trying to fit in too. You’ll get used to it.’ She settled onto the floor of the Hyde’s airlock as the gravity field asserted itself. It was something of a relief; she functioned fine in zero G, but she was not really used to it yet.

‘Like everything else,’ Delta replied. The inner airlock door opened and she set off into the ship. ‘I’ll see you later.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Aneka replied. ‘Light rigging. Should be
enormous
fun.’

~~~

‘What do you know about High Drahain?’ Aneka asked. Ella gave a whimper in response; Aneka’s fingers were teasing her clitoris with an expertise born of much practice. Smirking, she added, ‘Come on, High Drahain, what do you know?’

‘Oh… It’s… It’s an old c-colony. Founded by… oh Vashma… Founded by a religious group… originally. Anthrop… shin chou, don’t stop! Anthropologically interesting. Stratified society. Tends to nggg… tends towards a view that women… women should be home-makers.’

‘That explains Delta, and doesn’t.’

‘D-Delta’s young… ohhh… Probably rebelled against… Please, Aneka, stop teasing.’

‘I like it when you squirm.’

‘Please…’

Relenting, Aneka picked up the pace and it took only a few seconds before the little redhead was thrashing against her. ‘For a woman who could probably crush a man’s head between her thighs, she’s painfully insecure,’ Aneka said as the wriggling subsided.

‘Jenlay on Drahain don’t wear the revealing clothes you see in a lot of the core.’ Ella’s voice was breathy, but not exhausted; that meant she would want to go again soon. ‘There’s
far
less recreational sex. It’s not entirely impossible that she’s a virgin. A lot of the Drainies still consider intercourse as a means for reproduction and nothing else. You do it as part of a legal partnership and not otherwise.’

Marriage had fallen by the wayside in the last thousand years; people lived too long to make it really workable. There were legal statutes which could be invoked to govern joint property and the like, but actual marriage and the baggage that went with it was gone. It was interesting to discover some parts of society still viewed it in a more old-fashioned manner.