The Cold Steel Mind (23 page)

‘Controls are smoother,’ Shannon commented, sounding pleased.

‘Thank you, Shannon,’ Aggy replied.

Drake chuckled. ‘I’ll take her back in. I want to get a feel for her if her handling’s changed.’

‘You won’t be disappointed,’ Shannon commented. ‘Fifteen seconds to main engine ignition.’

The fusion torch engines had not been upgraded by the AIs, but they had had some work due to minor damage. Just about everything had had some minor damage and the science team were taking careful measurements of everything they could measure, just in case.

‘Hull integrity and atmosphere are solid,’ Ella said from one of the labs where she was monitoring her own set of data feeds.

‘Engine start-up is proceeding as normal,’ Cassandra added. She was down in engineering with Wallace. ‘Reactor optimal.’

‘And the gas tank’s full,’ Shannon said, grinning. ‘Clear of the bay. Engine burn in five… Main engine burn.’

The subsonic whine Aneka had been hearing as the engines powered up developed ultrasonic overtones and the Hyde powered away from the station. The Hyde was only capable of about half a G’s acceleration, but the difference compared to the thrusters was quite noticeable even if the artificial gravity compensated almost perfectly for the sudden change.

‘That,’ Drake said, ‘was incredibly smooth. Aggy, you’re very good at this.’

‘Compared to the sub-light drives on my old ship, Captain, this is easy.’ Aggy nevertheless managed to sound proud. ‘I am measuring no abnormalities in the engines.’

‘Confirmed,’ Cassandra said. ‘Engine output is nominal. Acceleration is within normal parameters.’

Drake gave a nod. ‘Abraham, you ready for the warp test?’

‘Need you ask? I suggest giving the station several hundred kilometres’ clearance before engaging, however.’

‘Ready here too,’ Gillian added.

Shannon’s hands were moving again. She glanced at Drake, receiving a nod. ‘Garnet Hyde to Negral Control. Initiating warp drives in thirty-five seconds.’

‘Noted, Garnet Hyde,’ Control replied with no apparent hesitation. ‘Good luck and a good flight.’

‘Let’s give it a thirty-minute time limit,’ Drake said. ‘If anyone sees
anything
out of the ordinary we drop out immediately.’

Aneka was watching through the window as the drive engaged. Space seemed to pull in towards them for a fraction of a second, stars became streaks of white and then were shifted through blue and into the ultraviolet, and then vanished as the light was compressed into frequencies even she could not see. Then Aggy compensated for the movement and the dots reappeared.

‘Velocity is stable,’ Shannon said. ‘Point-oh-eight-three parsecs per hour.’

‘No radiation effects,’ Gillian stated. ‘The warp envelope looks stable and we’re getting no electromagnetic effects beyond the usual gamma-ray impacts.’

‘Everything here is in the green,’ Wallace said. ‘It looks very much like the operation was a success.’

‘It’s silent,’ Aneka said. ‘If it’s making a sound it must be above my frequency range.’

Drake settled back in his seat and relaxed. ‘Thirty minutes,’ he said, ‘then we’ll drop out, recheck everything, and head back.’ Aneka noticed him pat the arm of his flight chair; Drake was happy, his ship was going twice as fast as usual and performing perfectly.

~~~

‘Any problems?’ Aneka asked as she entered the lab.

Ella looked up from her console and smiled. ‘Nothing I can see and Aggy seems happy with the data.’

The golden woman appeared near them. ‘I have made some small adjustments to the warp field in conjunction with Doctor Wallace. The Garnet Hyde is a different shape to my old body. I cannot detect any issues with my structure either, and there is no detectable atmospheric loss or impurities.’

Ella grinned and, when Aggy’s image vanished again, took off her glasses. ‘All good.’ She nodded towards one of the larger screens showing the starscape outside. ‘And the view is awesome.’

‘Where are we?’ Aneka asked, her own eyes on the stars.

‘Fifty-ish light days out from Negral going up from the galactic plane.’

‘So it’d take light nearly fifty days to get here from Negral, and we did that in thirty minutes?’

‘Uh-huh.’

Aneka blinked. ‘Kind of brings it home. How fast we travel, I mean. It always seems to take months to get from star to star and I’ve never really had a concrete idea of the distances…’

‘It’s normally about a day to travel a parsec. We can do double that now. A parsec is about three-and-a-quarter light years, so we can travel six-and-a-half light years in twenty hours.’

‘That’s Earth, Old Earth, to its nearest neighbouring star in under a day. I remember Alan telling me that was about four light years away once.’

Ella grinned again and her fingers flicked over her console. The room lights dimmed to black leaving only the light from the screen of stars to illuminate them. Aneka stepped closer and slipped an arm around Ella’s shoulders.

‘Still think it’s beautiful?’ the redhead asked softly.

‘I’m not sure I’m ever going to stop.’

‘Good,’ Ella whispered.

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There had been something of a melancholy atmosphere about the station since the proving flight had gone off without a fault. Everyone knew what it meant and everyone, even the AIs, found themselves looking for excuses to delay the inevitable.

For Aneka, who had been ready to give the order straight off the bat, the realisation that she did not entirely want to leave was something of a shock. In some ways, these were the last entities to know her before she was trapped in space for a thousand years. They had never met her in Human form, her body had been dismantled aboard the Agroa Gar, but they had known her before the memory loss, had studied her mind as it was all those years ago. And they liked her. Evolution in particular seemed to think of Aneka as the greatest accomplishment of the Human Evolution project, but all of them viewed her as the last living Xinti individual, even if she was not quite the same as the entities that had once created them.

The fact was that this place was as much a home as New Earth, maybe more so. This was where Aneka had become the Aneka she now was. She was still not sure whether that was the same as the one stolen from Earth, but it was who she was now. Negral was her home world, the place where she had been reborn. Leaving it was not going to be as easy as she had thought.

‘It isn’t like we’re your family,’ Evolution said from the doorway to her project lab.

Aneka looked around from the galaxy map she had been staring at. ‘I think you probably qualify as a distant aunt.’

‘How so? I’m software. I don’t even usually have a body.’

‘Well, you were “related” to the AI who built this body. If that makes her my surrogate mother then you’re a surrogate aunt.’

Evolution laughed, walking over to stand beside Aneka, her gaze falling on the star map. ‘Considering that we kidnapped you, twice, and uplifted you against your will, I’d consider that a compliment.’

‘You did as you were told,’ Aneka replied.

‘Hmm. I believe that “we were just following orders” is a poor excuse. Of course, I also believe in what we did.’

Aneka looked at her, head tilted slightly in thought. ‘You’ve no choice though, have you? You were created with a purpose, like Al. He’s more bound by his, perhaps, but you can no more go against it than he can.’

‘I can question the validity of my purpose where he does not, perhaps, have the capacity to do so. Of course, his purpose was your safety and the observation of your behaviour. Neither causes harm while my purpose has caused so much.’

‘You said yourself that there are species around that would not be so advanced without you.’

‘And others gone forever because of me. The Xinti among them.’ The synthetic body frowned. ‘Are we doing the right thing, Aneka? Should we put ourselves in a position where we are artificially advancing civilisations again?’

Aneka reached out and took Evolution’s hand. It was warm, the skin felt like skin. It was hard to think of this being as a computer. ‘You’ve had a millennium to work through your mistakes and every opportunity to control how you teach what you know. I trust Abraham and Gillian. If they think this can work, that the knowledge you have will be of overall benefit, then I have to believe that it’s going to be okay.’ She smiled. ‘Besides, we do have a couple of very big safeguards.’

‘Indeed. I was a little surprised that your crewmates agreed to have their memories altered.’

‘They all know they’re safer that way,’ Aneka replied. ‘If none of them knows where this place is they can’t be used to find out. That leaves Aggy, who won’t go against an order from me, and me. If someone can force it out of me then they probably deserve to get the information. How’s the relay network going?’

‘We have wormholed six out of ten units into position. The others will be placed over the next sixteen hours. Doctor Wallace has been observing the operation.’ She grinned. ‘With considerable interest.’

Aneka grinned back. ‘Yeah, he would be.’

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Aneka watched as the stars appeared ahead of the Garnet Hyde. The ship was moving smoothly out through the outer doors of the hangar bay under Aggy’s guidance. Aneka was the only person active on the ship right now, and she was up there for only one reason. She waited, silently, while the fusion drive took over from the thrusters and the Hyde accelerated away from the station. Then she reached out and tapped a button on the console.

‘Garnet Hyde to Negral Control. Ready for warp.’

It was Evolution’s voice that answered her. ‘All our sensors are showing green lights, Aneka. Good luck, and good journey.’

‘Talk to you in a couple of months, Eve.’

‘We’re all looking forward to it. Negral Control out.’

Aneka sighed. ‘All right, Aggy, let’s go to warp.’

Ahead of them the stars blurred and vanished into blue, and they were on their way home.

Part Four: The Art Of Diplomacy

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The last of the usual diagnostic messages scrolled past Aneka’s eyes. She opened them, registering again that Ella was not lying beside her. She had not even considered that she would miss that, but she had. Basically heterosexual before the Xinti had conditioned her to a more ‘open’ view of just about every new experience, the idea that missing a woman in bed with her would be a problem was just… odd. Still, she was missing Ella and she was glad that it would not be the case for much longer.

Sitting up and swinging her legs out of bed, she immediately saw Cassandra. The android had been her companion for the last twenty-one days. Aneka’s first duty once the Hyde was clear of the Negral system had been to reactivate Cassandra. Turning herself off had been her own idea; she had wanted no possibility that she would see anything that could lead back to Negral. She had, in fact, been quite happy to be inactive for the entire trip, but Drake had nixed that; if Aneka was awake someone else had to be, and Aggy did not count yet.

‘Good morning, Aneka,’ Cassandra said, smiling. ‘Would you like some breakfast?’

‘We’ll get the others up,’ Aneka replied. ‘They’ll want food and drink, and I can grab something then. It’s not like I really need it.’

‘Shall we go down then?’

‘Let me get my suit on.’ Aneka reached for the garment as she said so.

‘Are you sure you should bother? You’ll just have to take it off as soon as Ella has recovered.’

Aneka gave the android a look. Cassandra was all serious, except for the twinkle in her eyes. Slipping the Ultraskin garment up her legs she said, ‘It comes off very easily. Aggy, would you restart the air cycle in the other rooms, please?’

‘Of course, Aneka.’ The computer’s image appeared near the cabin door. ‘Shall I initiate the recovery systems? It requires ten minutes and thirty-eight seconds, on average, to complete.’

It would not take them that long to walk to the cold-sleep room. ‘Yes. Pipe the telemetry through to Al.’ Almost instantly two rows of indicators appeared in-vision showing the frighteningly low heart and respiratory rates of each crew member, and their nearly non-existent EEGs.

Ten minutes later, as Aneka and Cassandra waited with bottles of isotonic fluids, the readouts looked far more normal. ‘Everything appears to be normal,’ Cassandra commented as she walked down between the two rows of white coffins with their transparent lids.

‘Uh-huh,’ Aneka replied. There was a spike in brain activity on one of her displays and she turned towards the pod Delta was in. She had sort of figured that the girl would be the first up and, sure enough, the lid hinged open a second later and Delta let out a groan.

‘Are we there yet?’ Delta croaked, sitting up and wincing. ‘I hate cold sleep.’

Aneka handed her a bottle. ‘About a day out from Sapphira.’

‘Right.’ Cracking the seal, the muscled redhead drained the bottle in one, very thirsty pull. ‘Tell me again why we’re stopping off at Sapphira.’

‘It’s the first Federation world we come to. We stop here, contact New Earth, and get instructions.’

Monkey’s pod cracked open then, forestalling any further discussion, and after that they were busy as people started to rapidly awaken. The last was Wallace, the oldest and the least adapted to stress, though it was Gillian who expressed their joint displeasure.

‘I’m getting too old for this,’ Gillian groaned, holding out a hand for a second bottle of water.

Aneka giggled. ‘Do you say that every time you wake up from cold sleep?’

‘For as long as I’ve known her,’ Bashford said, chuckling.

‘Just imagine how I feel,’ Wallace countered. ‘Could someone get me my…’ He stopped as Cassandra handed him the anti-gravity unit the AIs had given him. ‘What would I do without you?’ he asked, grinning.

‘You would certainly never be able to find anything,’ Cassandra replied, ‘but I think you would adjust.’

‘All right,’ Drake interjected, ‘I want food, a lot of coffee, and a status report. I trust you two haven’t broken my ship?’

Aggy’s voice came from the room’s speakers. ‘All my systems are operating perfectly, Captain. We are currently twenty-three standard hours from entry into the Sapphira system. The flight has been smooth and uneventful.’