Aneka Jansen 3: Steel Heart (25 page)

‘Was a little weird,’ Aneka commented. ‘Ships attacked, crew killed, nothing taken. Does seem like terrorists rather than pirates, but you’d think even terrorists would loot the things.’

‘Maybe it was the Ghost Fleet,’ Monkey offered. His grin looked a little forced.

‘I still don’t really understand how a bunch of rational, even scientific, people can be scared of a space ghost story.’

‘Well,’ Ella said, ‘if you’re into reading at the moment, try Childress Dane’s
The Ghost Fleet
. It should be in the library. That’ll tell you all you need to know. Just don’t read it aloud.’

‘What’s it filed under?’

‘Historical fiction, but there’s no sex. Well, not what you’d call sex.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Aneka was not convinced. ‘Right after Sally gets rescued.’

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The Ghost Fleet
was a fictionalised account of what the author claimed was a genuine investigator’s search for the truth behind the legend. It was not a bad read, though Aneka thought the idea that anyone could have survived the eventual reveal plotline kind of took away from the idea behind the story.

The plot followed the investigator, Anne Carter, as she seeks out people who claimed to have seen strange ships, mysterious sensor echoes, and the aftermath of Ghost Fleet attacks. It worked nicely to build up the tension with each tale from some terrified, hardened spacer building on the last. Eventually Carter thinks she has spotted a pattern in the attacks and books passage aboard a ship she believes could be the next victim of a recent string of assaults. Of course, her ship is hit and she spends two days hiding in air ducts and almost getting caught a number of times. There were numerous descriptions of things the creatures from the fleet did to the passengers and crew ranging from simple, but very violent, murder, through torture, to the rape of both sexes, apparently simply to brutalise rather than for any sexual gratification. Eventually the fleet leaves, Carter is picked up, and the story is supposedly told to the author in a room in an insane asylum.

The creatures were interesting. Dane never named them, calling them ‘creatures’ or ‘things’ throughout. They were described as being not particularly large, six-limbed, with four eyes, two forward-facing and two at the sides of the head. They were strong and viscous, and clearly technologically advanced, and they seemed to work very closely together in teams. What struck Aneka the most was that Dane could have gone for the typical huge, muscled, fanged, and clawed evil alien, but the description made them seem more like ants or some highly social species of monkey. Maybe that was what made it sound believable.

‘It’s not bad,’ Aneka said to Gillian and Ella. ‘I mean, I still don’t quite understand why everyone gets freaked by it, but it’s a good read. The aliens are believably not the kind of thing you’d expect.’

The two scientists were going over potential starting sites with her in the ship’s lab and they had taken a break to give their brains time to digest the options. Ella looked surprised. ‘You finished it? You only started it last night and it’s a long book.’

‘I read really fast when I want to. Electronic media anyway. Also, I don’t sleep as much as you mortals.’

‘Huh.’

‘Well,’ Gillian said, ‘Anne Carter was obviously fictional. No one has ever survived an attack attributed to the Ghost Fleet. With one caveat. Dane did the research herself and the part about finding a pattern in the attacks is pure fiction. All the stories she tells come from actual interviews with people who claimed to have seen things, and from reports on vessels discovered afterwards.’

‘You said there was a caveat?’

‘Yes. Dane started doing the research because she was on a ship that was first on the scene at an attack. They found one person, a woman, who was still alive when they got into the ship. She managed to give a description of the creatures which had… Well, you read the book, you know the kind of things they did. Then she died of her injuries. So, no one has ever survived for more than a few minutes. Dane’s book purports to tell a real story and a lot of people believe that story.’

‘The other thing is,’ Ella said, ‘that for all the horrible things that are done to the victims, there’s a feeling that it could be worse. There are always a few people missing from the ships. Maybe they get spaced, but most people believe the creatures take them away with them. And if they do all that to the people they don’t take, what kind of horror gets done to the ones they do?’

‘Huh,’ Aneka responded. ‘Yeah, I guess I can see it, but it’s still just a ghost story when it comes right down to it. It’s much more likely that people are seeing sensor anomalies and pirate attacks. I mean, if I were a pirate I think I’d use this as cover.’

‘Yes,’ Gillian agreed. ‘That is the rational explanation. Rationality, however, does not always cut it with people, and the Ghost Fleet appears in both Torem and Herosian legend going back to before the Xinti War. There is just a possibility that it’s real.’

‘And a possibility, no matter how remote, is enough to keep that kind of thing alive and scaring people.’

‘Precisely. Now, I’m not sure continuing this planning is going to be fruitful. Tomorrow we should start getting some basic information on the system. Not enough to know what’s there, but enough to know where the planets currently are. When we know that we should have a better idea of our best route.’

Aneka sank the rest of her coffee. ‘That sounds like a plan to me.’ She sighed. ‘Even if Stephen was crap in bed, this coffee would have been worth it.’

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‘And we’re getting this every trip?’ Delta said, pointing at her coffee mug.

‘Uh-huh,’ Aneka replied. ‘As long as the Hyde is flying.’

‘Which I hope will be many years to come,’ Aggy commented. Her image was currently residing in the mess room wall next to a schematic of the Sol system.

‘Agreed,’ Aneka agreed. ‘So, if I’m reading that display correctly, we should come in on the side Saturn is on.’

Aggy turned and looked towards the display, even though she was obviously not really looking at it, and a dotted line moved in from the bottom right side. ‘Yes, Aneka. I would assume then that you would prefer to drop out of warp in the Saturn system and insert into an orbit around Titan?’

‘If we’re coming in that way anyway,’ Gillian said, ‘then I’d like to see whether the Xinti left anything of the facility there. Then… What about swinging clockwise around the Sun to Mars, take medium-range scans of Earth from there before moving in for a closer look?’ She looked towards Drake.

‘With Earth and Mars in close proximity like that… Yeah, I think that makes sense and we can use Venus to give us a slight slingshot. I’ll run the fuel usage projections, but it should work.’

‘Titan,’ Bashford said, stroking his chin. ‘We’ll need suits. It’s cold, relatively high air pressure. I’ll prepare a briefing on potential hazards.’

‘We don’t even know if there’s anything worth looking at yet,’ Gillian pointed out.

Bashford gave her a grin. ‘If there’s
anything
down there you’ll want to look, and I have time to prep this so I see no point in delaying.’

‘You know me far too well, Leo Bashford.’

‘I should do. Well, we have a plan.’

‘Yes,’ Drake agreed, ‘we do. Aggy, would you make the course adjustments please? We’re going to Titan.’

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Aneka stood behind Shannon’s flight chair, hands on the back of it, her fingers gripping the adanymax as she waited for the view to change.

Shannon’s hands moved over the console. ‘Warp exit… now.’

Aneka gasped. Ahead of them sunlight lit up the billions of icy moonlets that made up the rings of Saturn. ‘I never thought I’d see this,’ she said, her voice soft. ‘Never. I’ve seen pictures from probes. Everyone has, but no one had been out here by my time.’

‘It’s a good ring system,’ Drake agreed, ‘but that planet is too damn big for comfort.’

‘Problem?’

‘Not especially. Shannon, put us into an orbit around the gas giant. We’ll scan from here and then you can go in for a closer look on the shuttle. It’s got anti-gravity.’

‘Fair enough. How’s the EM?’

‘Out there,’ Shannon said as she trimmed the course, ‘you don’t want to know. Shielding is keeping it out. Five minutes to orbital insertion. Titan is in sensor range. Gillian, you should be getting telemetry through.’

Gillian’s voice came from the speakers; she was in the lab with Ella. ‘We are. Nothing artificial yet. I’m reading five thousand one hundred and fifty kilometre diameter, point-one-four-G surface gravity, one-point-four-five normal surface pressure… almost ninety-nine per cent nitrogen, the rest is hydrocarbons. Surface temperature is about ninety-four kelvin. It’s a real garden spot.’

‘Why did they even bother coming out here?’ Aneka asked. ‘I seem to remember something about there maybe being life on this rock…’

‘Less rock, more ice ball,’ Gillian replied. ‘The main reason for coming here was hydrocarbons. There were seas of methane down there. More useable hydrocarbons than on the whole of the Earth.’

‘They were drilling for oil?’

‘Basically. I’m sure there was a scientific component to the station, but commercial interests probably dominated.’

‘So we’re probably looking for a commercial facility? If it wasn’t bombed into oblivion.’

‘Yes. I’m reading evidence of cryovolcanism; there are definitely areas of lesser stability. It’s tidally locked… Are we inserting near it?’

‘Targeting a slightly wider orbit, ten thousand klicks retrograde,’ Shannon supplied.

‘Excellent. I’d expect them to build on a stable area on the side away from the planet, if possible.’

‘It looks kind of orange,’ Aneka commented.

‘That’s tholins in the atmosphere. And I’m reading a metallic structure,’ Gillian said, a triumphant note in her voice.

Aneka let go of Shannon’s chair and straightened up. ‘I’m on my way down. Looks like we’re going down.’

Titan.

Aneka swung the shuttle in from the eastern side of the station, flying into the wind. There was a storm coming in from the small world’s west, ahead of them, and the wind had been getting stronger the closer they flew to the buildings. Aneka could see lightning bursts flaring in the orange-tinted clouds.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘you picked a really interesting time to evaluate my piloting skills.’

In the co-pilot’s seat, Bashford smiled. ‘You’re at least as good as I am. I had to check you out some time, and this is a good test.’

‘You think I’m as good as you?’

‘I’ve got more experience; you’ve got faster reflexes and better coordination. The Xinti knew how to build a body.’

‘Huh.’

Ahead of them, through the faintly orange haze, the shadow of a low structure became visible and Aneka cut back on the thrust a little. ‘You seeing that, Gillian?’

There was no answer for a second. Gillian was in the back at the science station and they could not see her working over the sensors, but they knew that was what she was doing. ‘Structure seems intact. No signs of any damage. Either the Xinti didn’t spot it or they didn’t care.’ A pause and then a surprised tone entered her voice. ‘I’m registering low levels of EM.’

‘There’s something powered in there?!’

‘It… appears so. I have no idea what could be powering it, but there is something in there generating electromagnetic signals. Electronics, I think. Could you drift us around to the north side?’

Aneka checked the telemetry her in-vision display was giving her. ‘Not asking much,’ she muttered, and then nudged the vessel sideways, keeping its streamlined nose in the oncoming air.

The station was becoming more obvious. It had been streamlined itself: low, smooth buildings with metallic shielding over them and no windows. There seemed to be two main sections on a north-south alignment. The larger one was to the south and had various pipelines leading into it. Aneka figured that was processing for the methane, but it seemed rather small. The northern building had a dome on top of it which she figured contained communication and sensor equipment. The ship was not detecting radar emissions, so if the base was powered it was not looking out for visitors.

‘There!’ Gillian said suddenly. ‘Do you see those? North and west of the northern building? The pits?’

There was a black circle just north of the smaller building, maybe forty metres across. Aneka’s enhanced vision suggested that it was, indeed, a hole in the surface of the planet, the walls made of a different material than the icy crust. ‘You think that’s a landing area?’

‘That would be my guess. It gets incoming ships out of the storms. There’s a much bigger one further to the west, probably for methane transports. My guess would be that the closer one connects to the main habitation block.’

‘All right…’ Aneka glanced over at Bashford.

‘Be careful when we drop into the hole,’ he said. ‘You’ll need to cut back the engines pretty quickly, I suspect, and there could be some turbulence.’

Aneka nodded. ‘Like you said, you’ve got the experience. Everyone hang on, this could get bumpy.’

Edging the ship into position over the hole in the ice was easy enough. The shuttle had cameras which let her see all around it and she could patch them into a view in her vision field so that she could see ahead of her
and
in a three-sixty field under the ship. As soon as they got within a couple of metres of the surface, she could feel the irregular updraft trying to push them up and into the western wall. She adjusted the thrusters and continued dropping.

‘It’s around a hundred metres deep,’ Gillian said.

‘Al, give me a range to the bottom, please,’ Aneka asked silently. Green digits appeared in-vision showing the readout from the sensor array. One-hundred-point-two metres. Ninety-nine-point-five…

The wind cut back alarmingly from the west and the ship bucked forward. Aneka cut power to the main engines and hit the forward thrusters. There were a few shouts from the rear cabin, but the ship settled itself quickly.

‘We’re okay,’ Aneka called out. ‘Turbulence is settling too. Landing here can’t have been popular.’