The Winter War (22 page)

‘There’s the source of the
dents,’ Ella said, pointing at the display.

The breach had, it appeared,
dropped into a curved corridor similar in design to the Agroa Gar’s
orbital hallway. The material was the same as the Agroa Gar too. On
the floor of the corridor was what initially looked like a body,
but was actually some sort of robot. Humanoid, or Xintioid anyway,
and obviously damaged. It had clearly been capable of action at
some point, but the survey robots had found no evidence of
electrical activity at all.

‘Think it’s safe?’ Aneka
asked.

‘I think if it wasn’t it would
have done something by now. It’s been lying there for seventy
years.’

‘Huh,’ Aneka grunted. ‘Look
away.’ She reignited the torch and started cutting a hole big
enough for them to climb down through.

~~~

The robot remained still while Ella
crouched down to examine it. Aneka still stood over it with her
pistols drawn, just in case.

‘Laser burns on its armour,’
Ella said. ‘One optical sensor was destroyed, but it kept going…
Hang on, this isn’t Xinti in origin…’ She pulled a large,
cylindrical power cell from an open panel on the robot’s back and
yanked the cables off it where they had been soldered on.
‘Herosian. The idiots jury-rigged some of their own power cells to
it to get it moving. Probably thought they could control it.’

‘And it turned on them,’ Aneka
said. ‘Not surprising. When they couldn’t stop it, they sealed it
in, and when it seemed like it might get out they ran.’ She looked
up and around. There was light from the microbot cloud as well as
Ella’s helmet, and in it something else became obvious. ‘This is
the same type of ship as the Agroa Gar.’

‘It certainly looks the same,’
Ella agreed.

‘Come on, let’s take a look
around.’ She started off clockwise around the ship, knowing the
layout from their study of the vessel she had spent twelve hundred
years asleep in. They came quickly to one of the containment rooms.
On the Agroa Gar it had had a cell in it with bio-plastic walls
capable of holding a fairly large animal. Here the cell’s wall had
been shattered and the door into the room bent outward by something
using a considerable amount of force. There was one other thing
that was different and very significant.

‘Is that what I think it is?’
Aneka asked.

Ella crouched down again,
running a scanner over the bones lying in the middle of the floor.
‘Herosian skeleton. Dead about seventy years, according to the
sensors.’ Herosians were reptilian-looking creatures with heavy
bodies and heavier, bony skulls, though they were warm-blooded. The
skeleton still had some scaly hide adhering to it, the brown colour
leached away to near transparency. There was little evidence of the
bullish neck, but the heavy jaw was obvious, and the muscle anchor
points on the bones were quite pronounced. The cause of death
seemed obvious: something had blown its chest open as though a hand
grenade had gone off behind its ribs.

‘I think the robot has an
antimatter blaster built in,’ Aneka commented.

Ella nodded, then she tapped a
silver armband which was still in place around the body’s right
humerus. Aneka had seen the same thing on a Herosian before. The
colours indicated something about status, but this one had glyphs
on it. ‘Ashad Hithor,’ Ella said. ‘Death’s Head in Herosian. He
belonged to the mercenary unit Winter thought came here.’

‘You read Herosian, I take
it?’

‘Adequately. Speaking it makes
my tongue hurt. Lots of sibilants. It comes in useful at
conferences.’

Aneka laughed. ‘Yeah, I bet. So…
They locked the thing in the cage to contain it, but when it
powered up it just broke free and killed this guy. The door there
gave them time to seal the breach…’

‘But then it started hammering
on it and they thought it was going to get out.’

‘They panicked and ran…’

‘And it eventually ran out of
power and dropped where it stood. Just shows that you should send
archaeologists to dig up a wreck like this rather than mercenaries.
We should go on.’

The ship had clearly been out of
control when it crashed. Well, in-control ships did not crash, as a
rule, but this one had been going backward when it slammed into the
ground. The reason for the lack of control seemed obvious when they
got to the bow and discovered that the control room, and the
computer that would have been above it, was more or less entirely
gone.

‘A nuke,’ Ella said as they
looked through the door at a wall of sand. ‘The only thing I can
think of that could do damage like this is a nuke. They must have
got too close to an explosion during the war.’

‘No radiation,’ Aneka said,
checking her sensor unit, ‘but I guess it’s had a while to cool
off. I tell you, these ships are accident prone.’

‘The Agroa Gar was almost
certainly sabotaged,’ Ella pointed out.

‘True.’ She turned away, moving
around to the lab behind the control room, and grimaced.

The lab was just like the one on
the Agroa Gar, complete with the X-shaped examination table which
she knew rather too intimately. Here, however, there was a pile of
bones lying under it. They looked odd to Aneka, almost as though
they had come from fake medical skeletons, and not Human ones.

‘They’re Xinti,’ Ella said,
examining her scanner. ‘They used a synthetic material like
adanymax to form the skeleton of their general-use bodies.’
Settling onto her haunches, she sifted through the pile. ‘And all
the skulls are missing. I think the mercs brought all the crew
bodies they could find in here, and they took the skulls for the
processor units inside them.’

‘That’s… sick,’ Aneka said. She
had no real love for the Xinti, but these had once been people and
they had been treated as spare parts.

‘They were obviously here
looking for tech they could pilfer.’

‘Yeah, so what else did they
get?’

The answer became obvious when
they found one of the rooms on the starboard side empty aside from
various severed cables.

‘This was where the stealth
shield system was located,’ Al said, though he was only confirming
what Aneka already knew.

Apparently Ella remembered the
layout that well too. ‘The stealth system,’ she said. ‘They took
out the whole stealth system.’

‘Uh-huh. And these
terrorist-pirate ships that have been attacking our ships, they
have the same sort of stealth system.’

Ella turned and looked at her.
‘You’re saying that the Herosians are behind the attacks.’ She
sounded like she wanted Aneka to deny it, but knew she would
not.

‘It’s a little circumstantial,
but if they got this unit, and they never told anyone else about
it…’

‘But Herosian ships have been
attacked…’

‘According to the Herosians.’
Aneka shrugged. ‘Maybe they have. Maybe they attacked a few of
their own ships to make it look good. Maybe they really aren’t
responsible, or maybe these mercs are the ones doing it without the
knowledge of the Herosian leadership, but…’

‘That sounds like so much
gopi.’

‘Yeah, pretty much.’ She turned.
‘We should check the drive bays, see if they ripped anything else
out, then…’

‘I’d like to send the survey
microbots around this place before we go. I think we should fully
document it. It’s a valuable archaeological site, aside from
anything else, but those things may spot something we missed.’

Aneka nodded. It was a good
plan, even if it delayed their departure by a day. ‘Okay, but let’s
finish our own survey first. You know, I have a feeling this is
just going to confirm what Winter thought.’

Ella looked around the empty bay
again and then followed Aneka out. ‘I’m pretty sure you’re right,
and I really wish you were wrong.’

‘Uh-huh. If there isn’t a way to
sort this out quietly, it’s going to get really messy.’

‘It’s going to mean a war,’ Ella
stated flatly. ‘The one thing the Federation was supposed to stop.
The stupid, fafung gowdeyinjing!’

Aneka just nodded. She could not
have put it better herself.

FScV
Pegasus, 3.8.527 FSC.

‘Federal Science Vessel Pegasus to New
Earth Control,’ Aneka said to the cockpit comms system. ‘Requesting
clearance through to Station One for docking.’

There was a pause as the flight
controller checked their transponder and located them on radar, and
then, ‘Pegasus, this is New Earth Control. Clearance granted
through to…’ The voice stopped again, the woman sounding slightly
confused when she continued. ‘Pegasus, we have a redirect. Please
proceed to Corax high orbit and contact control there for further
instructions.’

Aneka frowned. ‘New Earth
Control, please confirm that redirection.’

‘Pegasus, instructions
confirmed. Authorisation is from the Federal Security Agency.’

Aneka looked at the nav display;
Al had already instructed the flight computer to plot a course to
Corax. ‘New Earth Control from Pegasus, setting course for Corax.
Out.’

‘Is there a problem?’ Ella’s
voice came from the speakers.

‘Don’t know. We’ve been directed
to Corax. FSA instructions.’

‘Winter protecting her
assets?’

‘If she wanted to do that she
should have got us into the station and out of the way.’ She
reached out and activated the Pegasus’ electronic countermeasures
suite. If they were attacked, that alone was not going to save
them, but it might make the difference between survival and a cold,
unpleasant death. ‘Ella, put your suit on. Just in case.’

~~~

Corax was the largest moon of Joval VII,
over half the size of New Earth it even had an atmosphere, even if
it was mostly nitrogen and carbon dioxide at a temperature which
could freeze you solid in a second. The misty air obscured the
planet’s surface at the best of times; from high orbit the small
world was one, grey cloud.

‘FNf Delta Brigantia to
Pegasus.’ Aneka smiled as she recognised the voice of Captain
Anderson over the radio.

‘Pegasus here. Nice to hear you,
Anderson.’

‘Mutual. We’re just here to be a
bridge. We have a shuttle docked to port ready to take you through
to New Earth. Can you swing in to the starboard airlock?’

Aneka reached for the controls,
checking the sensor display for positioning. ‘Be there in…
forty-five seconds.’

‘Just don’t scratch the
paintwork, I just had her re-sprayed. Orders are to leave
everything aboard. We’ll make sure your luggage and equipment get
down. Winter wants you down on the surface as soon as
possible.’

‘So why did she have us come out
here?’

‘Military base? Don’t know, to
be honest. Ours is not to reason why.’

Aneka glided the Pegasus in
alongside the larger ship, aligning the airlocks. ‘We’re in
position, Brigantia.’ A few seconds later there was a series of
thunks as the transfer tube locked in place and then a bleep from
the console indicating they had a solid seal. ‘We have a good
connection,’ Aneka said. ‘Transferring flight controls over to
you.’

‘See you shortly,’ Anderson
said, and the connection went dead.

Marilyn Anderson was a tall,
moderately attractive blonde with a muscled frame hidden under a
standard, Navy issue, green shipsuit. It did not really do anything
for her. ‘Aneka,’ Anderson said as the couple appeared in the
airlock, ‘and this must be Ella. I’ve heard a lot about you.’

‘From Aneka?’ Ella asked.

‘No. Well, yes, but also from
Chance and Shari. Word is you almost wore them both out.’

Ella blushed. ‘I had help.’

‘They fought valiantly,’ Aneka
said, ‘but no one can withstand the force of a horny redhead.’

Anderson laughed. ‘Come on, we’d
better get you through to the shuttle. Don’t want to keep the head
of the FSA waiting too long.’

She turned and led the way
through the ship’s crosswalk passageway to the airlock on the other
side.

‘Kind of a short visit,’ Aneka
said. ‘Still nice to know this thing’s still flying.’

Anderson nodded as they walked
into the airlock. ‘It’ll take more than an exploding hyper-dense
star to kill the Brigantia. Fair winds, you two.’ And the airlock
door closed behind them.

Shuttle B96921, En Route to New
Earth.

Apparently, the DuCar class of shuttles
was named after a famous runner from the last century. Twin
antimatter torch engines gave them a lot of power, but they were
small and that meant they lacked internal gravity. And despite the
modern mono-crystalline hull, it felt to Aneka like they were
sitting in a paper aeroplane.

Ella seemed nervous too. ‘This
feels kind of… wrong,’ she said as the ship powered toward New
Earth as fast as its engines could push it. She had her helmet in
her lap, clutching it like it was a safety line.

They were alone in the
six-person passenger compartment, separated from the cockpit with
its single pilot by a short corridor and a bank of equipment. ‘This
isn’t what I’d describe as a logical plan,’ Aneka agreed.

The pilot’s voice came over the
cabin speakers. ‘We’ve hit the halfway point. We’ll have you there
in another… forty minutes, give or take.’

‘Thanks,’ Aneka replied. The
ship was already at top speed and the engines had been cut back to
a low roar. The acceleration when they had left Corax had been
around two gravities, uncomfortable but not painful. Now they would
have been floating if they were not strapped in.

‘My pleasure,’ came the answer.
Then, ‘What the fuck?!’ The ship’s axis shifted suddenly and the
main engines cut back in, slamming them back into their seats.

‘The ship’s sensors have
registered a gamma-ray beam passing close by the hull,’ Al said
before the pilot could say anything. ‘The vessel firing was not
apparent to the sensors prior to the attack.’