Aneka Jansen 3: Steel Heart (17 page)

There was a flicker of confused muscle-motion across Teldarian’s face, emotions vying for contention too fast for Aneka to differentiate them even with her accelerated brain. ‘Yes, she has. I’d like to have a chat with you about the world you used to know, a proper one.’

‘Well, I’m here all evening…’

Teldarian smiled. ‘Something a little longer than that. I’ll arrange something.’

‘All right,’ Aneka said, trying to keep the wariness out of her voice.

‘Excellent,’ Teldarian replied. ‘Now I just have to find time in my schedule for about twelve hours with Abraham and I’ll be a happy man.’

Wallace chuckled. ‘Cassandra will arrange something.’

~~~

‘I saw you talking to Stephen Teldarian.’ Aneka looked around to see Ella behind her, dress still sparkling as the microbots swirled slowly around her.

‘Yeah, apparently he’s interested in warp engines and Old Earth history.’

‘Also drinking, parties, and women. He runs the largest starship engineering company in the Federation. He’s worth… billions.’

‘So?’

‘Well…’

‘I’ve met rich, powerful men before. Quite a few of them couldn’t keep
their
eyes off my boobs either.’ She gave a slight grin. ‘That was back when I had smaller breasts. Anyway, if he’s loaded and interested in history then maybe we can get some cash out of him. Not that there would be any actual cash… You know, I kind of miss small change.’

‘Yes… He might be up for giving up some money,’ Ella said, not taking the change of subject, ‘but is it going to be worth the cost?’

‘Who says there’s going to be a cost?’

‘With people like him there’s always a cost.’

Yorkbridge Mid-town, 10.2.526 FSC.

The water from three shower heads cascaded down onto Aneka’s body as she lay back, her shoulders against the wall, and her body straining as Ella’s fingers worked inside her. The little redhead had been particularly wild, starting from when they had got home after the function. She had slept for no longer than Aneka had been offline, and had dragged Aneka into the shower to continue.

The familiar roar of sound began in Aneka’s ears. Electricity rippled up through her body. Light burned in her mind… and then it was over and Ella was grinning at her like a maniac.

‘You,’ Aneka said, trying to steady her breath, ‘are being more… crazy than usual.’

‘We’ve got two days off before we’re back on the campaign trail and I feel like fucking you silly.’

‘She’s worried about Teldarian,’ Al told her.

‘Why?’

‘Because he’s rich, good-looking, and he wants you, and Ella is insecure about losing you.’

‘You know, I’m not going to run off and leave you,’ Aneka said aloud.

Ella was terrible at hiding her feelings. Then again she knew she was. ‘You keep saying that.’

‘Maybe you’ll start believing it sometime.’ She hooked her hands around Ella’s behind and pulled her in hard against her. ‘Now, why don’t we get on with the fucking each other silly without the additional baggage.’

Ella giggled. ‘I can get behind that.’

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‘We have a package in from the Jenlay Historical Society,’ Gillian said, waving a hand at the wall screen in her office which was displaying various windows. ‘They’ll match any funds we get from industry credit for credit.’

Aneka looked over the screen. Each window was some sort of deal or deal in progress and everyone was there to take on anything which needed doing. Today even Shannon was there, though the vivacious blonde was still not looking quite herself. A psychic, Ardus Quint, had wiped her memory, and it had taken a lot of work from neuroscientists and psychic surgeons to get it back. It had taken almost a year of work to get her back to almost normal, but her own psionic abilities, which had been a problem for her since she was a child, were still not quite under control. To stop herself hearing the thoughts of anyone and everyone nearby, she was taking drugs to suppress her telepathy. Unfortunately it also dulled her mind in other ways.

Gillian was still going over her list. ‘We have offers of equipment coming in from Mason Robotics and Graystone-Collier. David and Delta, I need you to work with the Mason rep to see what we can make use of.’

‘They do some really amazing hazardous environment, semi-autonomous drones,’ Delta said. ‘If we are dealing with a radioactive environment, they could be really useful.’ Delta was a powerfully built young woman, the result of being born on a high-gravity world. Her face was kind of cute, which belied the muscular look. She had started growing her auburn hair longer since joining the team and it was really working for her; the old, short look had done nothing for her face and Aneka had suggested growing it out. Aneka had also put her onto corsets and bras which pushed her rather heavy breasts up. Thirty years in high gravity had done nothing for her in that respect, but a little uplift and she had bounteous cleavage, which Monkey greatly appreciated.

‘And this is why we have a robotics tech on the team,’ Monkey put in, grinning. He was looking happier, and better fed, than he had done when Aneka first met him. A little more confident too. He was Monkey to just about everyone, only his mother ever called him David. He still wore his hair as a slightly unkempt mass and sported a valiant attempt at a goatee beard. And he was still nowhere near as muscular as his girlfriend. However, especially since Delta had moved in with him, he had started looking like a man who could not believe his luck, and he tended to clam up less around attractive women.

‘Indeed,’ Gillian replied. ‘Delta, make sure he does some of the work. Bash and I will be handling Graystone-Collier. Maybe we can get our hands on some of that new ultra-hi-def lidar equipment they’ve been touting.’

‘Would be useful,’ Bashford agreed.

‘A company called Extreme Measures has offered survival equipment. Aneka, could you look over their catalogue and see what we could use?’

‘Sure. They sound like some of the trendy extreme sports companies from my time.’

‘They are,’ Bashford replied. ‘However, they do make some hostile environment equipment which could be of use. Some of it is almost military spec.’

Aneka nodded. ‘I’ll check it out.’

‘Drake and Shannon,’ Gillian continued, ‘the Administration wants to see a flight plan as soon as possible so they can run risk assessment.’

‘Almost done,’ Drake replied.

‘Another… day?’ Shannon suggested. ‘We need to rerun the resource plans.’

Drake nodded. ‘It’s a long trip and we’re being paranoid.’

‘A little paranoia is probably good,’ Bashford commented, nodding his own agreement.

‘And that leaves Ella,’ Gillian said, ‘who will be running the coordination here and keeping the various administrations off our backs so we can do our job.’

‘You pull the short straw?’ Monkey asked.

Ella gave him a sour look. ‘Pretty much.’

‘All right, troops,’ Gillian said, ‘we’ve got work to do. Let’s get on it!’

Aneka snapped off a jaunty salute. ‘Yes, ma’am!’

‘Less of that, young lady, or I’ll put you in the brig.’

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The head office of Extreme Measures FRC was only three stops north on the subway from Aneka’s apartment building and the look of it from the outside made the company seem even more amateur than the name. The front entrance was down on street level, below the layer of mist which pervaded that part of the city. There was what looked like a hand-painted sign over the door, though Aneka’s edge recognition software picked out features which suggested that the paint dribbles and haphazard-looking letters had actually been carefully designed. There were a half-dozen men and women hanging around outside the place dressed in dark, faux-leather clothing reminiscent of biker leathers and they were actually gathered around something that looked like a motorcycle dreamed up by H. R. Giger. Aneka heard, ‘Da de roofang,’ from the little group as she walked past and gave them a smile. Rim Worlders, probably.

‘Oh, wow!’ She heard the voice as soon as she walked into the huge reception room behind the Polyglass doors. ‘You came!’ She narrowed in on a man walking towards her fairly rapidly wearing a bright, neon-yellow T-shirt with
Extreme Measures
printed across it in red, a pair of knee-length khaki shorts, and bright red running shoes. ‘That is so amazingly fridgy!’ He looked like he belonged on a beach in Hawaii, or on a surfboard just off the beach, probably on the highest wave he could find. Wild blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes, attractive, of course, with a tightly muscled body, and a deep tan. ‘I’m Eddie Leverson. The banks call me the CEO of this place.’

‘Actually he’s more like the den mother.’ The speaker was a woman, not old, very attractive, but with a far more serious look about her than Leverson had. Her hair was short and straw coloured, her eyes green-blue, and she had less of a tan than Leverson. Her body did suggest that she kept herself fit, however; there was a lot of tight muscle on her frame. Her outfit, shorts and a cropped company T-shirt, somehow worked in counterpoint to her serious expression.

‘And this is my partner, Annie Teach,’ Leverson said.

‘I’m the chief financial officer,’ Teach told her. ‘I also handle our advertising on an administrative level.’

‘And she’s also one of the best free climbers this side of the Rim.’

‘On break days,’ Teach put in. ‘Right now I’m all about the advertising. Getting some of our kit on your expedition gets us coverage we could really use. We’ve got good products here, but a lot of people don’t take us seriously because we come out of the sport scene.’

Aneka gave her a little shrug. ‘My boss said you had some interesting equipment and he’s a pretty serious guy, especially about what he uses in the field.’

‘He’s a rarity,’ Leverson admitted. ‘A lot of people look at our customers, see guys into skiing, skydiving, surfing… Then they go talk to a more traditional manufacturer.’

‘Okay… Well, what do you have that you think we can use?’

Leverson started for one side of the large room. It was, it appeared, part reception area, part showroom, part meeting hall for various sporting fanatics. ‘Well, we don’t really know what you’re facing out there, so I figure we’ll give you the tour and you can see what you like.’ He looked back and grinned. ‘We’ll start with Annie’s favourite area…’

In front of them was a climbing wall and there were several people busy using it. Teach picked up a pair of gloves from a stand and handed them to Aneka. ‘These aren’t something I use, but they’re damn useful for trekking. Gloves, boots, and knee-pads, usually. Based on the reactive setaestrip technology spacers use to keep their feet on the deck in zero-G. You come across something you can’t walk up, stick these on and pretty much anyone can climb a sheer cliff.’

‘We’ll need six sets,’ Aneka said immediately. ‘What kind of rope is that?’

‘Smart rope? Kind of a niche market.’

‘Mostly for people who aren’t so good at tying knots,’ Leverson put in.

‘It can be useful for quick ties,’ Teach said. ‘Hasn’t got the loadbearing properties of normal rope, but for climbing that isn’t usually an issue. Basically you can lock off half-metre sections by remote command. Your knots never slip, no matter how sloppy. You can even form them into a makeshift grapnel.’

‘We’ll drop a couple of bundles in,’ Leverson said. ‘Like Annie said, it’s niche, but you guys really don’t know what you’re going up against.’ He turned, moving around the room with a bounce in his step. ‘Oh, you’ll love this. I mean, it’s kind of silly, but you gotta see it.’

Teach rolled her eyes. ‘You’re not too busy, are you? He’ll show you every fridgy gadget we’ve got if we let him.’

Aneka gave her a grin. ‘I’ve got plenty of time. And he’s right, we have no idea what we’re going to find there. We need to be more flexible than usual so we need to entertain novel ideas.’

Leverson had a tablet in his hand, his fingers shifting over it. Beside him on a Polyglass stand was a metal box which Aneka thought she recognised. Her swarm dress, and Ella’s, came in a box like that which acted as a charging station and container for the microbots. Sure enough, a swarm of black beads emerged from the box and glided into the air forming a globe above them which then lit up brightly.

‘Firefly swarm,’ Leverson said. ‘Basically what you have here is a programmable, mobile light source capable of emitting light in any colour from infrared to ultraviolet. You won’t get daylight levels out of them, but they’ll let you see enough to read.’

‘I have a dress which uses this technology,’ Aneka told them.

‘Swarm dress?’ Teach asked. ‘I have one too. Eddie likes it.’

Leverson shrugged. ‘What can I say, she’s got a great body.’

Aneka laughed. ‘Yeah… How big a swarm can the box support?’

‘It’ll handle a five square metre swarm.’

‘Okay, drop one in. We normally work out of our shuttle, but we may be working at night and these things give a broader light field than a torch. We can fly them into tight areas to give light or send them up high…’

‘And this is why I keep saying we should get a trained facilitator on the payroll,’ Teach said.

Aneka chuckled, her eyes wandering around the room. ‘What the Hell is that?’

There were actually a couple of large devices on stands nearby, but the one which looked most out of place was a big, black pod with a lot of speedy looking stripes and flashes from the blunt bottom up to the narrower top.

‘Oh that,’ Leverson said. ‘That is
the
wildest ride you will ever take, but I doubt it’ll be much use to you to be honest.’

‘It’s an orbital dive pod,’ Teach explained. ‘Skydiving for crazy people. Rich, crazy people. I climb cliffs with almost nothing to hold onto, with every chance of falling to my death, but you wouldn’t get me in one of those.’

Aneka raised her eyebrows and Leverson was happy to oblige with further explanation. ‘It’s got a small rocket motor in it, enough to get it out of orbit. Then you’re in freefall, basically. The outer skin is an ablative heat shield which gets stripped away during re-entry and is jettisoned. You drop a hundred or so kilometres and then deploy the parachute for the final landing. Like I said, it’s a wild ride.’