Aneka Jansen 3: Steel Heart (39 page)

‘I haven’t used that name in a long time, Ella.’

‘Then… then you’re Yrimtan. You were Andrea Johnson on the Titan base, Aneka Jansen before that. The Xinti called you Yrimtan.’

‘Now I go by Manu Dei.’ She stepped forward into the light. ‘It means “Hand of God,” just as Yrimtan does.’ She looked almost exactly like Aneka, of course. Her hair was a pale, yellow-blonde, gold strands instead of Aneka’s silver. Her breasts were smaller and more naturally shaped, and they were covered only by some strings of silver beads. Her entire outfit seemed to be made of strings of silver pearls, barely covering her body, and her ample height was augmented by a pair of silver pumps. Despite her fear, Ella felt her skin heating.

‘Y-you’re using the sex pheromones.’

‘Yes, I am. I’m using the other ones too. It’s interesting that you know about them. Leo didn’t.’

‘We d-didn’t tell everyone.’ Ella squirmed slightly in her cuffs. She was uncomfortably aware that she was becoming wet and trying to fight it. ‘We didn’t want people to think she was influencing them when she wasn’t. She doesn’t use them.’

Yrimtan gave a throaty chuckle and reached out a hand, her palm alighting on Ella’s right bicep and stroking downwards. ‘I use them all the time. I engineered a susceptibility to them into the people here. I find it useful.’

A soft tingle began in the skin of Ella’s arm. ‘That… that feels like…’ The tingling grew, spreading outwards from Yrimtan’s palm until it reached out across her breast and her nipple began to stiffen. ‘A neurostim… You’re using a neurostim.’

‘I’m not familiar with the word, but I understand the reference. I understand that my counterpart has force generators in her palms. A defensive measure.’

‘Y-yes,’ Ella moaned.

‘I was made to educate. I have neural induction elements in my hands which allow me to push thought patterns into a brain, should I need to.’

‘You used… oh… that to help Alan.’

‘Indeed. The same technology can be used to stimulate other nerves in different ways. Pleasure if you tell me what I want to know…’ The achingly beautiful tingling feeling changed in an instant. As if a switch had been flicked over it felt as though someone was running a blowtorch over her arm. Ella screamed, and screamed, until the pain faded away. ‘Or pain if you don’t,’ Yrimtan said softly.

‘What… What do you want to know?’

The golden-haired Aneka smiled. ‘I want to know everything you know about the other me.’

Prae Wood, 21.9.526 FSC.

‘I have gained access to the suit’s computer system,’ Al announced.

‘Finally!’ Aneka replied.

‘I’m sorry it took so long. Strangely the protocols include no security or encryption. It took considerable trial and error to get the transport layer protocols right and then determine the command sequencing…’

‘Al,’ Aneka interrupted, ‘I don’t really need to know the details.’

‘I know. I just wanted you to know that I haven’t been dawdling.’

‘Al, I
never
think you’re dawdling. Can we get access to any useful geographical data?’

‘I am downloading everything I can find from the suit’s databases now. I will begin searching soon.’

‘Let me know when you have something.’ Aloud she said, ‘Al’s got into the suit’s computer. He’s working on finding a location for the city.’

‘Good news, at last,’ Delta said.

Aneka gave her a smile. ‘Yeah, good news. Then all I have to do is figure out how to sneak into an underground city guarded by soldiers with gravity pulse weapons, grenades, and rocket launchers. Then I have to sneak the others out so we can all escape this rock and get back to the Hyde.’

‘Doesn’t sound easy,’ Monkey commented, ‘but if it’s possible then you can do it. It’s going to be good to be back on the Hyde.’

‘Amen to that,’ Aneka agreed.

FScV Garnet Hyde.

‘Drake to Shannon,’ Drake’s voice came from the console speakers on the Hyde’s flight deck. ‘How’s things?’

Shannon shook her head. He was down in their cabin, supposedly resting, but he could not help checking up on her. ‘Everything’s fine, Drake. I’m fine. You don’t need to check up on me every ten minutes.’

‘It’s been over an hour.’

‘Still… either get some sleep, or come up here and fuck me. There’s nothing happening. We’re on a standard trajectory back to Earth. No course corrections needed…’

‘Isn’t that a bit tame for you?’

‘Gonna let that stop you?’

There was a laugh. ‘I can’t sleep anyway. I’ll be up there in ten.’

Shannon grinned, reaching for the tube of lubricant she kept under the flight console. Her eye caught something moving on the sensor display and she frowned. Reaching out she tapped the dot on the display and it zoomed in. One dot became three and the computer identified them almost immediately: missiles.

‘Gopi! Aggy, how long before impact?’

‘Sixty-two-point-nine seconds at current trajectory,’ Aggy replied. ‘Recommend evasive action.’

Shannon’s hands shifted over the controls, the Hyde spun on its axis, and the main engines fired jerking it sideways, relative to the missiles. She could see them adjusting their tracking and she shifted course again, twisting the ship violently away from its course.

‘Fifty-two-point-three seconds,’ Aggy said. ‘The missiles are tracking us and their engines are allowing them greater acceleration than we have.’

Swallowing, Shannon looked back at the display. She was not a military pilot and the Hyde was not a military vessel. There was no way she could pull them away from missiles homing in on… ‘Aggy, are we picking up any active sensor pings from them?’

‘No, Shannon. They appear to be using a passive homing technique.’

‘All right…’ She swallowed again. It was going to be a terrible risk, but she had to hope it worked or they were screwed. ‘On my mark I want you to power down everything except life support and your basic systems.’

‘Yes, Shannon. Ready when you are.’ Just like that, no questioning, no second guessing. A Xinti AI always believed that an organic mind knew what it was doing.

Vashma, I hope she’s right.
Shannon twisted their orientation again, lining the ship up on Earth, and hit the main drives at full throttle.

‘Fifteen seconds, Shannon,’ Aggy said, her voice calm.

Shannon counted to five. ‘Mark!’ Darkness enveloped the cockpit as all the displays went dead. She grabbed the arms of her chair to stop herself floating away as the gravity cut out, and then fumbled for her harness. Out of the window she saw three exhaust flares going past, and she held her breath…

Something jerked the ship violently and it began to tumble, slowly, end over end. As it inverted completely Shannon was able to see the dying explosions that had taken place where she had cut the power. Deprived of whatever they were homing in on, the missiles had detonated at the Hyde’s last known position. Shannon exhaled.

The flight deck door opened and Drake pulled himself in through the door. ‘What the Hell just happened?!’

‘It seems like someone doesn’t like us,’ Shannon replied.

Prime City, 7
^th
August 3186.

The sight of Bashford stirring, finally, brought a smile to Gillian’s face. The medi-techs had left her alone with him about thirty minutes earlier, apparently satisfied that he was healthy. She had been sitting on the edge of his bunk waiting for him to regain consciousness ever since.

He blinked at her, confusion and lack of recognition clear in his eyes. ‘Gillian?’

‘Yes, Bash. It’s me. How are you feeling?’

‘Uh… My throat’s dry.’

Reaching down to the floor beside the bench, Gillian picked up a bottle of water the medics had left. Lifting his head, she put the bottle to his lips and poured a little of the liquid into his mouth. His eyes closed in pleasure as the cool water soothed his throat, and she poured more until he nodded that it was enough.

‘What did he do to you?’ Gillian asked.

‘She,’ Bashford replied. ‘Gillian, it’s Yrimtan. Manu Dei is Yrimtan.’

‘Are you serious? She’d have to be… Well, I suppose there’s no reason Aneka can’t live that long, but…’

‘It’s her,’ Bashford asserted. ‘She wanted information. Who we were, where we came from. She got very interested when I told her about Aneka. Then she asked about the Hyde. She wanted the transponder code and frequencies. I told her, Gillian. Anything she wanted.’

‘Aneka’s pheromones can make you do whatever she wants,’ Gillian said softly. ‘She never uses them, but…’

‘That wasn’t all of it.’ Gillian frowned as she realised he was pulling at her robe. ‘Some kind of neurostim device. Pleasure and pain, over and over…’ A hand slid under the paper robe and up her right thigh.

‘Bash, I don’t think this is an entirely appropriate time to…’

His hand curled under her butt, pulling her closer. His breathing was becoming rapid. As she spoke she felt his grip tighten on her buttock and he jammed his eyes closed. ‘I don’t know if I can stop myself,’ he said through gritted teeth.

Gillian pulled his head against her shoulder and held him there. ‘Yes you can, lover,’ she whispered. ‘You’re strong, and we’ll work through this together.’ She felt his arms move, his hands tighten against her back, and hoped that she was right.

FScV Garnet Hyde, 21.9.526 FSC.

‘So I remembered that story you told me,’ Shannon said, ‘about the pirates who were targeting ships by tuning their missiles to transponder frequencies.’

‘So you guessed that that was what these had been programmed to do,’ Drake said. Reaching out, he pushed a strand of blonde hair from her face. ‘Quite a risk.’

‘I didn’t think it could be worse than letting three missiles hit us.’

‘Three
nuclear
missiles.’

‘That too.’

‘You were fucking brilliant,’ Drake said, shifting his hips just so.

Shannon groaned. ‘Sex in zero-G isn’t easy, but it’s
so
worth it.’

‘I think you deserve a reward for saving our collective butts. Besides, it’s a day and a half to Earth orbit as close as I can figure. There’s nothing much to do until we get closer and with Aggy down to basic maintenance we can’t even watch vids. So I’m going to keep rewarding you until you tell me to stop.’

‘A day and a half?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I can do that.’

Prae Wood, 21.9.526 FSC.

‘Aldershot,’ Aneka said. ‘It’s under Aldershot.’

‘Does that mean something?’ Monkey asked.

‘It’s where I used to live. My parents’ house anyway. My family lived there.’

‘Could be a coincidence,’ Delta pointed out.

‘Yes,’ Aneka agreed. ‘Aldershot was an army town. There were probably bunkers under it which could be used in the event of some sort of war. They could have used it when the bombs started dropping.’

‘Well, the map shows some buildings still standing,’ Monkey went on. ‘Logically, if there’s an entrance then it’s in one of those. But how are you planning on getting in?’

Aneka looked around, her eyes arriving on the body of the man she had killed. ‘Al, could you hack his implant? They must have identity coding similar to the mechanism the Federation uses. He had no other ID on him.’

‘I see no reason why not,’ Al replied. ‘They seem to employ the “arrogant ignorance” school of security. They simply don’t believe anyone would try to attack their security.’

Standing up, Aneka walked over to the body, took the bridge off the cable into the suit, and then reconnected it into the man’s neck port. ‘Got a connection?’

‘Yes. His implant still has power. I’ll begin working on it immediately.’

‘What are you doing?’ Monkey asked, looking a little disgusted.

‘I’m going to get ID from this guy, dress up in his armour, and walk in the front door.’

‘Uh,’ Delta was looking unconvinced, ‘isn’t it going to be a bit tight in certain areas?’

Aneka laughed. ‘Maybe, but I figure it’ll refit like our suits, and he’s pretty barrel-chested. It’s the best plan I can come up with.’

‘It’s too risky,’ Monkey replied.

‘No, it’s not.
Nothing
would be too risky. Nothing.’

Prime City, 7th August 3186.

Ella was screaming. The pain had been burning through her chest for the last… Time had lost its meaning. All there was was the pain spreading out from Yrimtan’s palms where they cupped Ella’s breasts.

The hands slid down to her ribs, her waist, her hips, and the pain subsided, replaced by tingling and then pleasure. The tingling spread, stiffening her nipples and settled as a throbbing pulse between her legs. She moaned. The sensation was intensely stimulating, but not nearly enough to get her off.

‘Tell me about her, Ella,’ Yrimtan said, her voice soft. ‘Tell me all about her and there will be no more pain. Tell me about her and I’ll make you feel better than you’ve ever felt before. You know I can. You’ve felt it. Tell me.’

‘N-no… If you use that too much…’ They had a neurostim back at home. It was capable only of delivering pleasure, and they had discovered very quickly that using it too much would lead to addiction. ‘How… how much did you use it on Bash?’

‘Oh… Leo took a long time to break. I used it on him a lot.’

~~~

Gillian woke to confusion. There was air on her skin where she expected her gown to be, hands sliding over her skin. She blinked and managed to focus, and she saw Bashford’s face over hers, pain written all over his features.

‘I can’t… I need…’ She could hear the pain there too. He was trying so hard to control himself.

What did the bitch do to him?
‘It’s all right, Leo. I’m here and you’re safe now.’

‘Gillian… I need to feel…’ His body pressed down and she felt him, hard against her pubic mound. ‘I shouldn’t… give in. But…’

‘It’s all right.’ She lifted her legs, spreading them to either side of his hips, and he was in her before she had time to say anything else.

8
^th
August 3186.

Yrimtan lifted her hands from Ella’s body, turning and walking away. The redhead strained in her bonds for another few seconds before sagging, her head lolling backwards. Drool coated her chin and mixed with the sweat soaking her body. She was entirely spent, which was just as Yrimtan wanted.