Steel Beneath the Skin (11 page)

Aneka set the safety and slipped the pistol back into its holster, blinking at the damage. ‘Well fuck me sideways,’ she muttered.

‘Yeah,’ Monkey said. ‘That’s why people still worry about meeting up with a xinti.’

~~~

Aneka watched her own diagnostics rippling past over the inside of her eyelids, happy to see that everything was in the green. Her time display suggested that she had barely had four hours sleep; enough, but meagre. However, she decided she was going to get up anyway since she had woken up from a dream of being strapped to a frame in the xinti ship they had found her in while strange aliens and robots hissed and crackled their peculiar communication.

Slipping out of bed, she glanced toward the cockpit and saw the dark sky outside. Night had fallen on Alpha Mensae IV and the rest of the team would be back in the shuttle, maybe finishing up dinner, maybe going over the data they had collected or watching a film on one of the consoles. She could hear voices, and could have resolved them if she wished, but she was not interested in eavesdropping. Reaching to the deck at her feet, she picked up her leotard to pull on.

Monkey was at the security console, though half his attention was focussed on the screen across the aisle which Ella and Bashford were using to watch something Aneka took to be a comedy. They were laughing at it anyway, though there seemed to be more naked people on screen than Aneka expected from a sitcom. Monkey glanced up at her with a grin on his face as she walked past, and she returned the grin. Her face straightened as she caught something on his screen.

‘Bash? How did that diagnostic go?’

‘No faults found,’ Bashford replied. ‘Everything was optimal or better, actually. I ran a check on the transmission systems, sensors, and the power systems, just in case. Nothing to indicate a problem. Why?’

‘We keep getting random camera dropouts. Very short. Less than a second.’

Monkeys hands moved to his keyboard. ‘She’s right. Twenty-six of them over the day. Number sixteen went out for nought-point-seven-five seconds ninety-six seconds ago.’

A map of the camera placements flicked up in Aneka’s vision field. Sixteen was one of hers, just north of the eastbound track. ‘Can you bring up a plot of the outages with times on a map?’ Monkey nodded, fingers flicking over the keys. By now everyone was watching the display; Gilroy had moved up from her science station. ‘The side-track first, early this morning,’ Aneka said. ‘Then various places around the circle. I don’t see a pattern.’

‘Neither does the computer,’ Monkey supplied, ‘but fifteen, the one on the branch track, has dropped out more often than the others.’

Aneka checked her pistol. ‘Are you guys going to be up for another thirty minutes or so?’

‘At least,’ Bashford replied.

‘I’m going to go out and check that area.’

‘I’ll come…’ he began.

‘Armoured synthetic body, remember.’ She started for the rear hatch. ‘Keep an eye on the cameras and I’ll have Al patch my visuals through as well.’

Even in the dark the forest was bright to Aneka’s eyes. She walked along the game-trail to the point where the track branched off to the east and came across nothing. No tracks, no signs, nothing. As she approached camera fifteen, Al connected through to its control circuitry and a diagnostic display appeared in her vision field.

‘No sign of any faults,’ she said. ‘No visible damage.’ She flicked through the diagnostic displays to find a transmission coverage graph. ‘It’s been transmitting constantly. The dropouts have to be something jamming the signal.’

‘The transmitter on those things isn’t powerful,’ Monkey said over her comm. ‘It wouldn’t take too much to interfere with the sig-’ He cut off in static and Aneka had her pistol in her hand before she knew she was reacting. Something moved past her, a sound of rapidly moving footfalls, a sensation of presence, but even as she turned and looked after it she saw nothing. ‘-ka, do you read me?’

‘I read you,’ she said, this time managing to keep herself silent outside her head. ‘There’s something here. Something with some wicked stealth characteristics.’

‘Your signal cut out along with the camera,’ Monkey said, and was immediately cut off by Bashford.

‘Aneka, I want you back on this ship as soon as you can get here,’ the lead facilitator said, his tone urgent. ‘We’re going to lock down the shuttle and hold until morning.’

Aneka took a last look down the track and then turned, heading back. ‘On my way.’

3.10.523 FSC.

‘It’s using some form of wide-spectrum, adaptive camouflage,’ Aneka said as they sat around the shuttle over breakfast, ‘and a close-range jamming system to knock out radio comms. Al detected the jamming, but it didn’t make much difference at the time. Why would it need that on top of the stealth?’

Monkey, who seemed to know more about xinti weapons technology than anyone else, supplied the answer. ‘The Xinti had that kind of capability. Multi-spectral stealth coating was used on their scouting probes, but it wasn’t so much use against very high or low band scanners and the security sensors can probably see a wider band than your eyes. Even assuming this thing isn’t a xinti, the same would apply. So it jams the camera transmissions while it’s passing them.’

‘Why assume it’s not?’ Aneka asked.

‘It didn’t attack you.’

Aneka sucked on her teeth. ‘I wouldn’t make that call just yet. If this is a scout, it may not be sufficiently armed to take on what it would probably recognise as a combat model. A xinti scout could probably identify me. Maybe it even figured if I was a xinti-build, I was on its side.’

‘It’s not impossible,’ Gilroy said. ‘They had a highly stratified, hierarchical structure. Any organic life form, or a form derived from an organic life form, was higher up the ranks than a digital one. If it identified you as an emulation and it’s a robot, an AI, which seems likely given the timescale, you would outrank it.’

‘Huh. Maybe I can talk to it if I can spot it.’ She looked at the wide-eyed expression on Gilroy’s face. ‘What?’

‘You speak Xinti?’

‘Yes. Well, I could understand them on the ship. That translation software I’m running works for them, and I seem to be able to mimic just about any sound I want so the weird noises they make…’

‘No one knows how to speak Xinti,’ Ella stated flatly. ‘We can read their writing, but no one has ever figured out their speech.’

‘I guess I’d be a lousy spy if I couldn’t report back.’ Her reply was absent sounding, as though she was thinking about something else. Her fingers moved over the keyboard. ‘Surface team to Garnet Hyde, do you read?’

Patton’s voice sounded over the speakers. ‘Patton here, Aneka. What can I do for you?’

‘Those EM noise bursts you picked up, do you have recordings?’

‘Sending them down now. I’ll send the high-def scan data down at the same time. We’ve covered most of your immediate area.’

‘Thanks, Shannon.’ Aneka watched as the display on the security console showed the download of the data files, then selected the first one to complete, indicating that it should be treated as an audio file and played back. A burst of static erupted from the speaker and Aneka frowned. ‘A status report, “Approaching sector two boundary. Activity detected.” They’re xinti, and it sounds like there’s more than one if they’re sending back reports.’ She moved to the last of the files; the metadata attached to it indicating that it had been recorded just after her encounter with the scout. ‘It’s reporting the encounter with me,’ she said. ‘It says it’s detected xinti components and identified me as a xinti. A second voice tells it to return to sector one.’ She frowned. ‘It identified me as a xinti?’

‘Probably some aspect of your computer system,’ Gilroy suggested. ‘Xinti “brains” were different from the standard computers they used in robots.’

‘They have some sort of base?’ Bashford said.

‘That would be my estimation,’ Aneka said, still bothered by the identification. ‘What’s the plan, Boss?’

Bashford was the kind of man Aneka would have considered it a pleasure to work under. He knew his limitations, and his first action was to look at Monkey. ‘We haven’t been attacked,’ the younger facilitator supplied. ‘Dad always said that whenever anyone encountered a xinti defence system, it didn’t wait around. If it was going to hit you, it hit you. I don’t know why it hasn’t, but I think the Navy would be
very
interested in finding out. Maybe we need to be more careful, but I think we stay.’

‘Clearly,’ Gilroy said for the scientific contingent, ‘we want to remain here as long as it’s safe. If this is a potential Xinti site as well…’

Bashford gave a short bark of a laugh. ‘I know. That just gets your juices flowing faster. All right. Aneka, go through the rest of those transmissions. You might want to see if you can tune to the frequency they’re using, maybe pick up their comms. Join us at the admin office when you’re done. Monkey, break out the carbines and get the ladies some side arms.’ He looked around between Ella and Gilroy. ‘Wear them,’ he added firmly and very much as though he had been through this before.

People began to move and Aneka turned to the console, preparing to pipe the Xinti noise through her internal translation system. She paused as Monkey stopped beside her. ‘You want a carbine to go along with that cannon of yours?’

She remembered the specifications on the polychromatic laser carbines they carried. Her blaster had more raw power and the same penetration capability, give or take, and the smaller draw meant she could actually fire more charges before needing to reload. The carbines had her beat hands down on range, but… ‘In this terrain we won’t be engaging at the kind of ranges where a longer barrel has an advantage. I’ll stick with Bessie.’

Ella’s head went up. ‘You named your gun?’

Aneka turned to her console. ‘Bessie is a good name for a BFG.’

‘What’s a BFG?’

‘Big fucking gun,’ Aneka, Monkey, and Bashford said in unison.

5.10.523 FSC.

There had been nothing much in the other recordings. The scout had identified the four jenlay, though the word it had used translated as “human,” and determined that Aneka was not one early on. It had made a report indicating that the team was doing a survey. There had been no indication of an intention to attack, but it was clear that they had been watched more or less the entire time they had been there.

The body count so far was thirty-three, including the three looters. They had found ten corpses holed up in what had, in fact, turned out to be a house on the edge of the settlement. Three had been found in the shop, which appeared to be a general goods store from the contents. The remainder had been found in the administration building, and their location was telling. It appeared that a group of miners had made a last stand against the xinti forces in the west wing where they had power and water. They had collected enough rations to last several days, and touched none of them.

Aneka had walked among the rooms, taking in the upturned desks with blast marks a lot like the damage her pistol did, but bigger. These people had not stood a chance against the invading force, and they had probably known it. There had been no hope of reinforcements. FTL communications relied on the transmission of a tight beam of tachyons, according to Bashford. You had to know exactly where you were sending it, and even using modern equipment the transmission lag was measured in days. They had dispatched a report to New Earth from the Garnet Hyde, and that was going to take around twelve days to get there. They would not be getting a reply; it was impossible to hit a ship with a tachyon beam at that distance. If they ran into trouble, a high-warp response cruiser would take ten days to get to them from the nearest Naval base.

So far, however, the xinti scouts had left them alone. In fact, there had been no more camera outages, and no more burst transmissions. The team had settled into a working pattern where Gilroy and Ella did their job while the three facilitators guarded them. Monkey and Bashford took turns manning the security station on the shuttle, alternating that with sentry duty alongside Aneka. Aneka’s body did not seem to tire very easily, and she was now well suited to the task of keeping a constant, armed, watch outside whichever building the two archaeologists were working in. It gave her a chance to learn a little more about her colleagues.

‘So, your father is in the military?’ Aneka said to Monkey as they stood outside the shop. Well, she stood, he sat on a crate, his carbine resting on his thighs.

‘Captain of the Admiral Banfry. It’s an Admiral Class battleship. Captain Tor Gibbons, though his friends call him “Ape.”’

Aneka grinned. ‘Another reason they call you Monkey?’

‘Huh, yeah.’

‘What about your mother?’ She had already learned that, since marriage was a thing of the past, people did not assume married names. Children were allowed to choose the surname of whichever parent they wished, though traditionally girls would take their mother’s name and boys their father’s.

‘Oh, she’s inside digging through old stuff.’

Aneka glanced at him, seeing the slight colouring of his cheeks. ‘The Doc is your mother?’ Clearly he had got most of his looks from his father.

‘He takes after his father,’ Gilroy called from inside, confirming the speculation, ‘though he’s more my build. Ape is a sweet man, built like an armoured car, though. I’d probably still be with him if he spent less time in space.’ She poked her head out through the door to add, ‘The sex was incredible.’ Monkey went scarlet and she grinned at him before ducking back inside.

‘Parents are supposed to be embarrassing,’ Aneka said, consoling the boy. She kicked herself; he was older than she was before she had been turned into a robot. ‘Your dad’s the one who taught you about the Xinti?’

‘Well, they both did. Dad is the one who told me horror stories about them. He’s why I… well, wasn’t keen on you when we found you. That and…’ He trailed off.

‘And what?’ Aneka prodded.

Monkey looked mildly mortified. ‘Well, I’ve never met a robot or cyborg that looked like you. I… I’m a bit…’

Gilroy’s face appeared in the doorway again. ‘David tends to be a little timid around very attractive women.
Especially
ones he’s personally attracted to.’