Aneka Jansen 3: Steel Heart (3 page)

‘Should be enough time for an inspection.’

‘I would imagine so, yes.’

Aneka turned through the open door to the mess hall and immediately spotted Anderson and Scotts talking to Chance at one of the tables. The room was not large, but you could pack the whole crew in if you really had to. Generally you did not have to since someone was always on duty. Right now it was fuller than usual because most of the crew were waiting to find out what they were going to do rather than doing it.

‘How are you feeling, Scotts?’ Aneka asked as she approached them. She had been amused to discover the Brigantia’s chief engineer was named Scotts, though explaining why would have been a waste of time. Sadly he had an accent more like something out of New England than Scotland.

‘I’m fine. Skin’s healed over well.’ He grinned. ‘You can have your bed back.’

Aneka gave a slight shrug. The cabin she was in was unassigned, one of two set off to the sides of the habitation block. Anderson had a cabin on the port side, Aneka’s was on the starboard, and she was mostly in it because it kept her out of the way of the crew while they were doing their jobs. ‘You can stay in there if you like.’

‘That’s an offer you shouldn’t refuse, Chief,’ Chance said, smirking.

‘And we all know you couldn’t, Chance,’ Scotts replied smoothly, ‘but I’ve actually got a sense of decency. I’ll be fine in a bunk…’ He looked around at Aneka thoughtfully. ‘If you’re feeling generous, Ensign Grant broke his wrist falling off that bunk and he’d probably be better off with more space to rest in.’

Aneka looked across the room to where Gunnery Technician Philip Grant was trying to eat with his right wrist encased in a Plastex cast. ‘Hey, Grant, want to sleep in the starboard cabin for a while?’

Caught by surprise, the young man who was probably older than Aneka looked at his captain. ‘She’s offering you more space in bed, Grant,’ Anderson told him, ‘not nights of untold pleasure.’

‘Oh, uh, I guess it’d be more comfortable with this damn thing on. Sure, thanks.’

‘I take it from your attire,’ Anderson went on, redirecting her attention to Aneka, ‘that you’re ready to go out and take a look at the sensor array?’

‘Al tells me I can spend twenty minutes out there without worrying. That should be enough for an inspection.’

‘All right, you’ll go out the forward airlock in ten minutes. Gives us time to set up monitoring.’

Aneka nodded and started for the door. ‘I’ll be ready.’

~~~

The stars were bright sparks in the darkness around her as she walked over the Brigantia’s hull. The Delta-class frigates were built for speed, both sub-light and superluminal. That did not, however, mean a streamlined thing of beauty. The Brigantia was basically a cylinder with a pair of huge engines mounted at the back, and a bulbous nose. Aneka had to walk through the darkness from the rear of the forward section, around to the craft’s ‘chin,’ where the primary forward weapons and long-range sensors were.

‘Almost there,’ Aneka said, or rather thought. Her thoughts were relayed through her internal radio and sounded from the speakers on the flight deck. All very efficient and convenient. ‘Radiation level is within tolerances, but I’m not exactly feeling happy about it.’

‘We’d be feeling worse,’ Baron replied.

‘Yeah… I can see the panelling over the forward sensor array. It looks like something blew out.’ She frowned, moving carefully closer. Her boots adhered to the hull using a nanofibre bonding system similar to the ubiquitous setaestrip. She knew that stuff could hold just about anything; it was the future version of Duct Tape. The surface on her boots, however, she always felt a little less sure of since it was electronically controlled by her suit. ‘No… I think we got lucky. Looks like something blew out one of the forward turrets. There are metal fragments embedded in the hull all around it.’

‘It’s not metal.’ That was Scotts’ voice. ‘The outer hull layer on the bow is a synthetic monocrystal. If its structure is disrupted like that it could be interfering with long-range sensor operation.’

‘Great. It’s covering a good few metres around the turret. How do we clear it?’

‘Start back,’ Anderson said. ‘You’re not going to do it straight away.’

Aneka turned and started for the airlock. There was no sensation from her artificial skin, but her sensors were telling her that her dermal layer had taken damage: minor radiation burns, even through the suit. It was nothing that could not be fixed, and quickly, but she was in no mood to test her healing capacity right now. ‘On my way. But how
are
we going to fix it?’

‘The good news is that we don’t have to fix all of it,’ Scotts replied. ‘The bad news is that someone’s going to have to go over the surface of the hull with a plasma torch. That should anneal the material, even out the refractive index across the surface. Right now we’re getting too much scattering.’

‘That’s going to take a long time at ten minutes every couple of hours.’

‘Yeah, but the warp drive isn’t going to be working much sooner. We’re going to have to scavenge parts from other systems, cut out some of the damaged conduits… This is not going to be easy.’

‘At least you’re not saying it’s impossible.’

There was a pause, which was a fraction of a second too long for her liking. ‘Not impossible. No.’

Aneka remained silent as she trooped back, one careful step at a time, to the airlock. Scotts was not entirely hopeful they could fix everything enough to get home. Aneka was not going to ask what the odds were. It was almost certainly better not to know.

~~~

Aneka turned off the shower and took a towel from the rack beside it. The showers in the Brigantia were not great, but the one in her room was more spacious than the ones in the Garnet Hyde. It would have been a little restricting, but you could have got two people in the little cubicle here and there was just no way you could do that on the Hyde. Aneka still preferred the Hyde, though that might have been because Ella was generally sharing the room with her. As she padded out of the washroom here, it was Philip Grant who watched her from the bed.

The man’s pale-blue eyes followed her around the room as she dried her hair, put the towel back, and walked over to the edge of the bed. In her own time she would have expected a man she was about to share a bed with to be doing that, simply because she was a very attractive woman. She had been before the Xinti got their hands, and claws, and saws, on her. Her body was all tight muscle, long-legged, narrow in the waist. Her breasts had been too large in her estimation; too large for someone with such an active lifestyle anyway. Sports bras had been her friend. The Xinti had turned her short, dirty-blonde hair into something more like silver, and they had made her breasts larger, firmer, and a little more pointed in the belief that what they saw on the Internet was society’s ideal in womanhood. Her face could have graced a catwalk model: thin, high cheekbones, with startlingly bright blue eyes. So Grant had a right to look, even if sex was off the cards, but she had a feeling that his attention was born of something else.

‘Are you watching my body, or a finely made piece of machinery?’ she asked.

He blushed and his eyes rose to meet hers. ‘Both, I guess. I mean, I know you’re a machine, but… damn they did an amazing job. There’s no way I could tell if I just met you.’

Aneka smiled and lifted her right foot up onto the bed, examining the skin on her thigh. An hour or so after she had returned to the ship there had been reddening and a few blisters; radiation burns showing up. Now there was nothing.

Grant waved a hand at her leg. ‘There’s that, of course. I’d still have the burn unless they dosed me with a load of radiation treatment and covered it in synthetic skin.’

‘And that’s why I went out and not one of you flimsy organics.’ She grinned at him. ‘I wasn’t exactly happy about getting stuck in a robot body, but there are times when it comes in handy.’ Lifting her leg down, she pulled the sheet aside and climbed into the bed. ‘Uh… this might seem a little weird. I don’t sleep, I go offline. I’m told I move and breathe, and generally act like I’m sleeping, but you won’t be able to wake me. Al’s under orders to monitor external sounds, so if you’re having trouble with that wrist I should come around. On the plus side, I don’t snore, and if you do I won’t notice.’

‘I should be fine, y’know? It’s just a bust wrist.’

‘Walker said I should keep an eye on you for the next couple of nights. Listen to your medi-tech.’

Grant gave a laugh. ‘These beds are more comfortable than the bunks. I think I can live with it.’

‘Good. Computer, lights out.’ The room sank into darkness and Aneka settled her head on the pillow.

When it was Ella sleeping with her she always waited for the little redhead to fall asleep before shutting herself down, and now she waited for Grant to settle. He had a little trouble finding a position he could sleep in, but eventually she felt his body relax and heard his breathing steady. Still she lay awake, looking up at the ceiling, quite visible to her despite the darkness.

‘Al, play me Ella’s last message,’ she said silently, her eyes closing.

A window appeared on the inside of her eyelids, black at first and then replaced by the video message Ella had sent to Sapphira while the Brigantia was on its way there. That had been their last port of call before heading out to Negral, the intention being to avoid going on if the AIs had contacted the Federation during the flight.

‘Hey there,’ Ella said. Her voice sounded cheerful, but it also sounded like she was forcing it. ‘I… Huh, I hate leaving messages like this. I’d imagine you’ve seen the message from Senator Elroy. Still no contact from Negral, so I don’t get you back early. Vashma but I miss you!’ She paused, biting her lip. ‘I told myself I wasn’t going to do that and I went and did it inside of ten seconds. I do though.’

‘I miss you too, love,’ Aneka replied, even though she knew she was talking to a recording.

‘I’ve decided to get my eyes replaced, like Delta suggested.’ She had rallied, getting the cheerfulness back into her voice. ‘Clarion May Detective Series. I know it sounds silly, but they have magnifying optics. I figure that’ll be useful on the job. They have fair night vision capabilities too. They won’t be anything like your eyes, but they’ll be an improvement. Uh, Gillian sends best wishes… So do Kat and Dillon… And Drake and Shannon. They’re back. She’s doing better. Still in therapy, but she’s more like her old self. I think Drake’s still a bit worried about her… Oh, this is getting depressing again. I wanted to be all happy and sound like everything was great, and it’s not because you’re not here and we’re worried about the Xinti
and
the damn Herosians. They’ve been pushing to send ships out to Sapphira…’ She put her hand over her eyes and stopped again. When she lowered it she was smiling. ‘Look, it’s time for bed here. I’m going to just lie back and think of you, and let the audio record what happens. Maybe you can join in…’

‘Stop,’ Aneka thought, and the image froze as the smiling redhead started to dip out of sight of the camera. When the message had arrived Aneka had been a little embarrassed at the rest of the message, even if she had played it the same way and no one else could hear it. Phone sex for the future. Then she had played it back again and she had joined in. Now she might never hear those sounds again, live and with the woman making them. ‘Damn,’ Aneka whispered into the silence of the room.

Dropping into oblivion had never felt quite so good.

21.11.525 FSC.

The plasma torch was an incandescent flare of blue-white in the darkness of space as Aneka played it over the surface of the hull, careful to keep her movements smooth, her pace even. She was, at least, not alone. The radiation levels were down to a more or less normal background level and the crew had been taking it in turns to go out with her, two at a time. Today it was Hughes and Daventry, the ship’s XO, but the important thing was that they were going to be the last party out there. The hull over the sensor array was not perfect, but it was showing less than one per cent distortion, and that was considered good enough that they could fly on it.

A slight change in the lighting suggested that one of her companions had shut off his torch. A second later Daventry’s voice sounded over the radio. ‘I’m basically done, and my air supply is getting low. I’m heading back.’

Aneka shut off her own torch, examining the surface in the ‘light’ from ambient radio emissions as well as the visible spectrum. ‘Yeah, I think this is as done as it’s going to get. Gareth?’

‘Yeah,’ Hughes said, killing his own torch. ‘Hadn’t realised we’d been out this long.’

‘Time flies when you’re having fun,’ Aneka commented dryly. ‘Let’s get inside and we can see how much good we’ve done.’

Despite a strong desire to be out of her vacuum suit, Aneka headed from the airlock straight to the bridge. A-Shift was on duty, which meant Baron was on sensors and navigation, and was thus surrounded by people trying to work out whether everything was functioning properly.

‘We’re getting a four per cent drop in effective range,’ Aneka heard as she walked in. ‘Distortion is down to point-four-six per cent… This is all looking good, Captain.’

Anderson straightened up from where she had been crouched near the front of the small crowd of people. ‘Mister Chance, see if you can get us a little more range on the active systems.’ She turned and spotted Aneka. ‘Miss Jansen… frankly we’d probably still be blind if you hadn’t been here. You’ve done a good job.’

Aneka gave her a sloppy salute. ‘Just doin’ ma job, ma’am,’ she drawled. Anderson looked mildly confused for a second. ‘It’s a bad John Wayne impression… Sorry… You wouldn’t have a clue who that was.’

The captain grinned. ‘You must get that a lot.’ The fact that Anderson was grinning easily was a good sign. ‘Prentice, swing us around so that we can take a look at Negral. That’s what we’re actually here to check on.’

Prentice flexed her hands and took hold of the two joystick controls on the arms of her semi-reclined flight chair. The controls on the Brigantia were nothing like the ones on the Hyde, or even the Hyde’s shuttle. Here the pilot used twin control sticks to change attitude and control the various engines. A few short movements of the controls and Aneka heard the thrusters fire once, twice, three times, and the ship had realigned itself three degrees right yaw, seven upward pitch. ‘Should be on target, Captain,’ Prentice said.