Aneka Jansen 3: Steel Heart (21 page)

‘So far. And it was not one country all that time. I’ve no doubt the Federation will last a long time.’

‘
No
doubt?’

‘Little doubt,’ Aneka conceded. ‘The Herosians worry me. I think the only reason they’re part of the Federation is that it keeps everyone else from attacking them. If they ever manage to get the upper hand somehow…’

‘It’s probably a good thing, then, that they seem to lack the scientific aptitude of Jenlay or Torem. The culture back then was a lot different, wasn’t it?’

‘Uh-huh.’ The change of subject was a little jarring.

‘From what I read, it’s unlikely you’d be comfortable sitting naked in a hot tub with a strange man, for one thing.’

Aneka laughed, genuinely amused. ‘That rather depends. It wasn’t exactly common, but there were people who were into that kind of thing. And if I were invited to the private island of a very rich, attractive man I’d be expecting him to be after exactly one thing.’

It was his turn to laugh. ‘Yes, I’d imagine you would. However, the wine has gone to my head and I think it best that I retreat before I show myself up. Feel free to stay as long as you like. Olivia is on duty if you need anything.’ And with that he hauled himself out of the water and padded off to the bridge. As best she could tell, his private rooms were at the back on the north side of the house.

Aneka relaxed back into the water, deciding to finish her drink before returning to her room. ‘I can’t believe that worked,’ she said silently.

‘
I
can’t believe he’s that much of a gentleman,’ Al replied.

‘No. I’m not exactly putting up a fight. I pretty much told him I was expecting him to make a play, and he claims he’s too drunk and leaves.’

‘There was mild impairment of function, but nothing serious. He was making an excuse.’

‘Uh-huh. I didn’t notice any impairment of function where it counted.’ Plucking her wine from the side of the tub, she took a sip, letting the cold fluid send a chill through her body, a sharp counterpoint to the hot water on her skin. ‘There’s something a little weird going on here.’

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Daniella was out in the lagoon again. This time Aneka had seen her leave the house through the front door and run, naked, into the water, letting it reach mid-thigh before she dived forward and began a rapid crawl into deeper water. There was definitely something a little strange going on in the Teldarian household and she was not entirely sure she wanted to know what it was.

Forgetting about it, she hit the record button on her terminal and a small light came on to indicate the camera over the middle screen was working. ‘Hey, love. I figured I should send you another message, and flash my boobs at you in case you missed them. As yet I haven’t been propositioned. We’ve talked a lot, and gone for a couple of walks, but he hasn’t even made any non-verbal suggestions. Hopefully I’ll be back there in two or three days.’ Feeling a little self-conscious, she cupped her breasts, lifting them towards the camera. ‘Can’t wait to have your hands on these. See you soon.’

Reaching forward, she closed the recording, packaged it into a message and sent it off. It would be eight or nine hours before it arrived. According to Aneka’s chronometer that meant Ella would get it in the evening on New Earth. A second later a message appeared on the screen.

Meet me on the yacht in the lagoon. I thought we could have breakfast at sea. Stephen.

Okay. Actually, that could be quite nice. Walking to the closet she found her white dress and slipped it on before heading out through the window and turning up the beach towards the waiting boats. Daniella’s head bobbed among the shallow waves out in the pale-blue water, and the girl waved when she saw Aneka. Aneka waved back, and then the head was gone as Daniella dived. The girl was definitely a little strange, but nice enough.

The yacht was a twenty-foot, single-masted sailboat, though there were what looked like water jet outlets under the waterline at the back. There seemed to be more mechanical bits to the rigging system than Aneka would have expected too. Teldarian was on the rear deck behind a sleek cockpit, dressed in his usual T-shirt and slacks, and he grinned at her as she approached, his fingers moving over a panel. Immediately the sails began to unfurl; clearly this was a very high-tech sailing ship.

‘Come aboard,’ he said. ‘I’ve got food downstairs, but we can bring it out here once we’re out of the lagoon. Forecast is for reasonable, steady winds. It’s a good day for sailing.’

Aneka stepped down into the rear section, sitting down on one side, and suddenly the ship was underway. She heard motors winding in ropes; everything was automated. On the screen she could see a schematic map of the island and it took a couple of taps to set waypoints and then he was sitting beside her, the ship steering itself. It quickly picked an optimal course for the light wind in the bay and started tacking out towards the outlet to the ocean.

Looking around, Aneka finally spotted Daniella walking back up the beach towards the south side of the house. She looked a little hunched and her arms were wrapped around her body. Upset over something?

~~~

Aneka pressed the contact at the back neck seam of her dress and the setaestrip ‘zipper’ opened. The Bi-weave garment slipped off her arms like silk and she stepped out of it, dropping it onto one of the seats before padding up onto the thin walkways which ran along the side of the boat, and walking down to the forward deck. There she stretched out in the sun, quite aware that Teldarian could see her through the forward windows if he chose to look. He had gone below to put the breakfast dishes away.

It had taken twenty minutes to get out of the lagoon, another forty to reach the spot they were in now, and the time had been taken up with a conversation on dating in the twenty-first century, which had been more or less a continuation of what they had ended on the night before. He was, she thought, making his intentions a little more obvious and she was not entirely inclined to shoot him down.

Well away from the island, out in the open ocean, the wind was stronger and the boat was running fast, cutting through the waves at a good pace. Her navigation system was giving her a figure of about thirty kilometres an hour; they were around eighteen klicks from the island. The sunlight was doing a good job of counteracting the chilling effect of the wind. Salt spray spritzed her skin every so often as the bow broke through a slightly higher wave, but the boat stayed quite steady as it continued out from the land. According to the map Al had grabbed before they left for Odanari, the nearest large land mass was about eight days away at this speed. There was not a lot of land on Odanari. They were, for all intents and purposes, in the middle of a watery nowhere.

She heard his feet on the adanymax decking, the slight sticking sound of flesh on hard plastic, and opened one eye. He had rid himself of the shirt and slacks, and his opinion of the view was apparent from the semi-erection he was sporting, but he lay down beside her, sighing and closing his eyes against the sun.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘I’m not going to sleep with you just to secure that funding for the expedition.’

‘Having met and talked to you, I wouldn’t expect you to. You kept your end of the deal: you came here and let me grill you about Old Earth. I’ve enjoyed that more than you can imagine. I sent a message to my lawyers on New Earth last night authorising an initial half-million credit payment with another two hundred and fifty thousand contingency. So now you’ve no reason to sleep with me at all.’

Aneka was silent for a second, and then she moved, sitting up smoothly and then shifting across to straddle his hips. He looked up at her, raising an eyebrow, but she felt him stiffening under her. ‘There’s still one thing I need to negotiate,’ she said. Her fingers wrapped around his shaft, lifting it, and then she sank down, her eyes closing as she felt him filling her.

He let out a soft moan. ‘What… what’s that?’

She paused for a second, and then began a slow rise and fall motion. ‘I want a supply of that coffee you’ve got here.’

His hands moved up to grip her hips, his fingers digging into her flesh. She quickened the pace. ‘I’ll have… several tonnes… delivered.’

‘Tonnes?’ She sank down, pushing him in deep, and then began rotating her hips to keep the sensations growing. ‘I’ll be fucking you for days.’

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They sat in the aft deck area watching the stars as the yacht rode the waves back towards the island. It was after midnight and they were late heading back. Not all of the day had been spent in various forms of sex, but Aneka still felt that she had definitely settled her debt for the coffee, not that she expected several tonnes of the stuff to be delivered. Teldarian looked like a man who had spent a very pleasant day anyway.

‘I think I should head back to New Earth tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Or later today anyway.’

He was silent for a few seconds. She felt him move a little closer on the seat. ‘Of course, but… I was going to ask… Then I thought of the way you talked about Ella and I decided not to.’ She lifted her head, looking at him. He sounded like a tongue-tied teenager. ‘Now… I think I should ask anyway, because…’

She lifted her hand, pressing a finger to his lips. ‘Don’t. I’ll have to say no and that would spoil a beautiful day. Don’t.’

He moved back a little and his eyes dipped away. ‘Yes. You’re right.’

She watched him for a second and then turned, leaning over the rail of the boat and spreading her legs. He did nothing for long enough that she wondered whether she had really hurt him. Then he moved and a second later he was entering her. A chime from the navigation computer indicated that they were about to enter the lagoon and his hands joined hers on the railing.

‘At least I can have you now,’ he whispered as he started to thrust.

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‘I’m home,’ Aneka called.

Ella looked up from the couch and smiled, but it was a little more timid than usual. ‘I can see that. Did you get my last message?’

‘That Stephen sent the money through? I did.’ Aneka dumped her case beside the door and walked in, settling down beside Ella.

‘So you didn’t have to sleep with him to get it.’

‘Nope.’

Ella’s eyes narrowed. ‘But you did sleep with him.’

‘I did. On a boat.’

‘Uh… Why?’

‘Coffee.’

‘You fucked him for coffee!’

‘You haven’t tasted the coffee. But you will and then you’ll understand why. Besides… I wanted to. He’s a nice guy. Really.’

‘How was he?’

‘Good.’ Ella’s face fell. ‘You’re better, but he was good. He wanted to ask me to stay with him.’

‘Oh. But… but you’re here.’

‘Yes I am. He
wanted
to ask me, but even he could tell I wasn’t going to leave you.’

The little redhead smiled, timidly at first and then brightening. Aneka’s heart soared. ‘I’m kind of stupid sometimes,’ Ella admitted.

‘Yes, you are, but you’re still adorable. Now, I’m hungry.’

Ella bounced to her feet. ‘I’ll make you something. What do you want?’

Aneka caught her wrist. ‘Ella, I don’t get hungry for food.’

‘Oh… no.’ She was even prettier when she was smiling
and
blushing.

~~~

The afterglow of sex was better with Ella. Aneka lay with her girlfriend in her arms and enjoyed the feeling of intimacy which had not quite been there with Stephen. That was another reason for sticking with what she had.

‘There was something a bit weird going on with Stephen and his sister,’ Aneka said, voicing the third reason she had said no.

‘Trudy?’

‘The youngest. Daniella.’

‘Half-sister then. Same mother. There was a bit of a scandal a few years back. Daniella and her father. Stephen took her away and he’s been looking after her ever since, I think.’

‘He said she rarely left the island. She’s got this whole “wild nymph” thing going. Doesn’t seem like she’s all there. Wait… You said incest was kind of frowned upon, but not illegal?’

‘Not illegal, but she was
very
young and there were some rumours that it was violent.’

‘Shit… Well that explains her a bit more, but…’ Aneka shrugged. The girl had been strange, but maybe an abusive father covered that. ‘I thought that kind of thing would have been weeded out by your education system?’

It was Ella’s turn to shrug. ‘It usually is. Some people are too sick for anything to work.’

‘So much for the perfect society.’

‘I don’t think anyone’s claiming it’s perfect. I don’t think you can have a perfect society. Unless everyone is a drone.’

‘Well, I’m happy the Jenlay didn’t go there.’

Ella giggled. ‘Uh-huh. I doubt we’d be doing this if we had.’

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‘Well,’ Gillian began once her office was full of people, ‘thanks to Aneka’s closing of the deal with Stephen Teldarian, we now have quite enough funding to go ahead with the expedition to Old Earth.’ She paused, smirking. ‘I understand we also have a commitment from Superluminal to present one half-tonne of Ashtenna coffee beans to the Garnet Hyde at the start of each mission we undertake, from now until the ship is decommissioned.’

‘Shin chou!’ Ella squeaked. ‘Okay, I give in, it was worth it.’

Aneka laughed. ‘The coffee was good, but…’

‘Ashtenna coffee beans come from one world on the Rim,’ Drake said. ‘Ashtenna, obviously. They have to harvest them by hand, process them, and then ship them. They cost about a hundred credits for a kilo.’

‘So a half-tonne is…’

‘Fifty-K’s worth of totally wonderful caffeinated glory,’ Ella exulted. ‘If I give him a blowjob can we get a tonne per trip?’

‘I think half a tonne will do,’ Gillian interrupted. ‘We are now officially moving into the mission preparation phase. I suggest everyone makes sure they’ve visited relatives and such in the next month because on the second of the fourth we will be leaving for Harriamon. We have that long to get everything ready, and even if our worst fears are confirmed, we won’t be back home for over eight months.’