Steel Beneath the Skin (13 page)

‘Yes,’ Aneka replied, ‘but from what I’ve learned since I was reactivated, no one really won. All the combatants suffered huge losses. The galaxy was plunged into chaos for three hundred years. There’s a new federation of the surviving races, but the Xinti were wiped out. There’s no one coming to relieve you or give you orders, except me.’

This time there was a burst of radio chatter. All of them talking over each other until the scout who had been talking to her called for silence. The message Al put up when it spoke stated that the tone was almost pleading. ‘Orders.’

It wanted orders. They were, she realised, slaves. Now they were slaves without purpose, holding a position which would never be reclaimed. ‘If you disarm, I can accept your surrender for the Federation. They have laws. You would be treated as surrendering enemy combatants and treated fairly. I think that this new Federation would view you as they would any other sentient being. You may find your life better than under the Xinti. Two of the humans here are scientists, historians and archaeologists. They are very interested in what they could learn from you.’ She paused. ‘Look, I’m a soldier, or I was a soldier. If you fight, they’ll send warships and level the planet. You can kill the people here, but others know about you now. If I didn’t believe you’d be treated fairly, I wouldn’t suggest it, but surrender is your best option.’

‘Consideration required,’ the scout said. ‘No hostile action to be initiated. Self will communicate decision within one planetary revolution. Acceptable?’

Aneka nodded. ‘Acceptable.’ She turned and headed for the ramp as the hatch started to open. Al indicated that communications had been re-established as she reached the surface and she spoke silently. ‘They’re considering the terms of surrender. They won’t attack us.’

‘You believe them?’ Monkey’s voice, tense.

‘It was one soldier to another,’ she replied. ‘They won’t attack us, but I don’t know whether they’ll agree to surrender.’

‘What other option have they got?’ Ella asked, clearly a little confused.

Aneka kept walking, her expression grim. ‘They can wait for someone to come and blow the shit out of them, or they can do it themselves.’

7.10.523 FSC.

Gilroy and Ella were working on the site with Bashford assisting. Monkey was at the security console after replacing the destroyed cameras on the trail through the jungle. Aneka sat outside the admin building, her eyes watching the jungle with a window in her vision showing the view from camera fifteen.

According to Al, there was another three hours before the time limit set by the scout, which she was sure was the same one she had talked to in the clearing, was up. She had mixed feelings about the entire business. The thought had come to her as she sat through the night shift that if the robots surrendered they would likely end up as lab rats. The thought had also surfaced that she was going to be in for the same treatment, but she had a human mind and it would be far harder for anyone to lock her up for research purposes. A robot was another matter. And what sort of life was she really offering them? Most jenlay had a strong dislike of robots. She suspected the law against AIs was as much to do with that as not wanting to deal with the consequences. She at least looked human. She could probably avoid a lot of trouble because of that, but the warbots in particular would never integrate into federal society.

When the scout appeared in the view from camera fifteen, Aneka began running for the shuttle. By the time she got there, Monkey was standing at the tail ramp, his carbine cradled at the ready. He glanced at her, but he neither moved nor said anything. The scout was standing a few feet onto the broken concrete, silent and unmoving. It was still wearing its pistol and there was a bulky case slung over its shoulder by a strap.

As she approached it reached to its leg and Aneka snapped a look at Monkey, willing him not to react. The young man looked tense, but he seemed to recognise that the move was not a threat. When she turned back, the scout was holding its pistol at arm’s length by the muzzle.

Aneka took the weapon, nodding. She was a little surprised when it said, ‘Surrender not possible.’ It lifted the case from its shoulder and held it out. Aneka took it and looped the strap over her shoulder. Whatever it was, it was heavy. ‘Purpose negated by cessation of conflict. Our gratitude for honesty and respect expressed in data for research purposes.’

For a second, Aneka thought about trying to argue, but she was not sure she did not agree with the decision. Instead she raised her hand to her brow in salute. ‘I respect your choice. Thank you for the information.’

It might not have understood what the salute signified, but it seemed to understand her meaning. Its head nodded slowly and then it turned back into the jungle. Aneka turned back and headed for Monkey. The others had joined him now and there was a quizzical look on their faces as Aneka approached.

‘They aren’t surrendering,’ she said, ‘but they wanted you to have this thing.’ She shrugged the shoulder with the case hanging from it. ‘It said it was research data.’

‘That’s a xinti data storage unit,’ Gilroy said. ‘You couldn’t persuade them to stay?’

Aneka started past them to the ramp. The case was damn heavy and she wanted to put it down somewhere safe. ‘I didn’t try.’

‘Why not?’ Ella asked.

‘Because I think they’ve made the right choice.’ They were possibly being more sensible than she was.

~~~

Thirty minutes later Drake called down from the Garnet Hyde to tell them that they had detected an explosion where the xinti base had been located. It had an extremely high thermal reading, probably the result of the detonation of several plasma grenades.

Aneka wished she could get drunk.

Part Three: On the Edge

FScV Garnet Hyde, 2.11.523 FSC.

Aneka lay on her bunk, staring at the ceiling. She was getting a little sick of sterile spaceship interiors, but there was nothing else to look at. She had tried watching various movies, but she did not really understand the cultural references, action movies seemed to have died out, and the comedies were far too reminiscent of nineteen-seventies sex romps like
Confessions of a Window Cleaner,
except with more explicit sex. She had not thought they were that funny the first time around.

With the dig wrapped and all the equipment checked, packed, and stored away in the hold, the facilitator team members were basically off duty, and Aneka would have welcomed the oblivion of cold sleep. Except that no one had come up with a way of putting her to sleep, so that was not going to happen, and anyway they were taking a side-trip so no one was going to sleep.

Five days after the xinti ‘bots had blown themselves to pieces another ship had arrived in the Alpha Mensae system. The frigate, the Delta Guantina, had been sent out to assist if the robots had been more trouble than they proved to be. When it turned out that it was a wasted journey, they had left orders that the Garnet Hyde was to stop off in the Harriamon system on their way back for debriefing, and then turned around and left. Aneka had not been overly impressed with the two officers; they had seemed far too disappointed that they were not going to be able to bring enormous weapons to bear on a few relatively unprotected robots.

The door slid open and Ella came in, the smile on her face fading a little as she saw Aneka lying there on the top bunk. Ella had been getting more and more worried about her friend as the days had gone on, though if she were honest about it part of the worry was displacement activity. Harriamon was not her favourite place in the galaxy and she had been less than pleased when she had heard they were going there.

‘You look bored,’ Ella said. ‘Wanna fuck?’

Aneka let out a short bark of a laugh. ‘Sex is not the answer to everything, y’know?’

‘It’s
an
answer.’ She paused, unsure how to broach the subject which had been bugging her for a while. ‘Do you want to talk about what’s bothering you? You’ve been… well, kind of depressed since the Xinti thing. I’m worried about you.’

Aneka swung her legs off the bed and dropped to the deck with artificially lithe grace. Then she lay down on the lower bunk, putting her back against the wall and patting the mattress beside her. Ella settled into the crook of her arm, plastic ship-suit pressed against skin. It was hard to believe that Aneka was basically a robot; she
felt
real, even down to the warmth of her body seeping through the suit. As Aneka curled an arm around Ella’s waist, Ella’s hand stroked up over her shoulder, feeling the perfect skin, the tiny hairs.

‘We’re heading back toward civilisation,’ Aneka said, her voice soft and her breath making the skin on Ella’s neck tingle. ‘What happened with the xinti ‘bots made me think about the reaction I’m going to get, and then those navy guys turned up… Did you see the way they looked at me?’

‘Yes.’ Actually she had wanted to smack the frigate’s first officer silly. Her rational mind told her that the majority of jenlay had a dislike of robots and these men knew what Aneka was. They were acting on basic fears, difficult to overcome. But Aneka was a person, damn it! She had not asked to be turned into a mind in a metal body. You just had to talk to her…

‘I can’t help thinking that I might have been better off if I’d never woken up. Lots of people are going to be just like those sailors. I’m a freak, Ella.’

‘You’re not…’

‘The only bit of me that’s human is a simulation of my mind. I’m Aneka Jansen’s ghost animating a dead body. I’m not just a robot in a society which hates robots, I’m a robot that thinks it’s a human. My heart's artificial, my pulse is simulated. I can see your heart beating with the cameras I see out of. Mine just pumps.’

‘Then you can see my eyes too. I’m just as much a freak as you are, at least in most people’s eyes. You know your identification won’t tell anyone you’ve got cybernetic parts unless they have clearance to see that. Most people aren’t going to know.
We
wouldn’t know if we hadn’t scanned you when we found you.’ She frowned and put her finger to Aneka’s lips before further worries could be expounded. Then she reached up and hit one of the buttons on the headboard console. ‘Narrows to Patton. Shannon? Are you busy?’

The reply came after a short pause. ‘Not really. I was watching a vid.’

‘Could you come down to my cabin?’

‘Another threesome?’

Ella giggled. ‘Sex isn’t the answer to everything.’ Aneka rolled her eyes. ‘I need your talents.’

‘Okay. I’ll be right over.’

‘Her talents?’ Aneka asked.

‘Yeah,’ Ella replied, ‘she’s a wizard with a vibrator.’ Aneka swatted her on the arm.

Patton appeared through the door wearing a tabard-like robe in a light, silky material a few seconds later and padded across to sit down on one of the benches opposite the bunks.

‘Drake’ll kill you if he sees you out of your cabin in that,’ Ella commented.

‘He’s busy in the cockpit, and he’s expecting to find me naked and hungry when he comes down. He’ll forgive me about two minutes after I’ve wrapped my lips around his cock. What did you want?’

Ella rolled off the bed and sat down beside Patton, her eyes on Aneka. ‘Aneka thinks she’s a freak.’

The green-eyed blonde looked at Aneka for a second or two. ‘I started hearing people’s thoughts when I was seven. Didn’t understand what was happening at first. I’d answer questions I hadn’t been asked, that kind of thing. When I hit puberty it really ramped up and I couldn’t
stop
hearing them, even if I tried.’

‘It must be… weird.’

‘If I concentrate on one person it’s not so bad, but it is a little weird, yes. I hear what someone’s saying in my head just before the sound comes out, and sometimes it’s horribly embarrassing. The real problem is that I can’t block it out entirely even when I’m
not
trying. If I’m near anyone that thinks then I can hear it, like a noise in my head. It’s distracting and, um, I’m mildly addicted to painkillers from the headaches. It’s the reason I have my own cabin out away from all the others. It gives me a chance to have silence every so often.’ She paused and then said, ‘So, basically, welcome to Club Freak.’

Ella gave out a squeak. ‘Hey, I brought you here to help her.’

‘I am. Look, as soon as someone knows what I am they start acting like I’m snooping on their thoughts all the time. I don’t, I wouldn’t. For fuck’s sake why would I even
want
to know what most people are thinking?! People have thrown fits over your eyes. Monkey and I were stupid about Aneka until we got to know her.’ She stared hard at Aneka. ‘That’s the point. That’s the point I had to learn and, actually, it took my talking a friend out of suicide to make me realise that I may be a freak, but I’ve got talents that make me a useful member of society. So do you. You saved four people’s lives, Aneka. Doesn’t that mean anything? To the people who matter, on this ship and outside it, it will mean something.’

Aneka nodded. ‘Rationally, you’re right, but I’ve faced prejudice before and I didn’t like it then.’

‘When?’ Ella asked.

‘Having tits in the Army didn’t make life easy. Either they see the breasts and forget the rest, or they assume you’re too weak to do the job. I had to work twice as hard to be thought half as good. I went into freelance work because people there were more inclined to worry about what I could do than about whether I would be a distraction to the men.’

‘So you’ve faced this kind of thing before and you got past it,’ Patton said. ‘You’re not
supposed
to like it. It’s not likeable. It’s stupid and deplorable, but people are what they are. You said it yourself, you had to try harder to make people think you could do your job, but you’re clearly capable of it. This time around you have to make people like
you
even though they may not like what you are. Well, you’re beautiful, sexy, charismatic, I bet you know how to act to make people want you. In our society, that’ll get you a long way.’

‘Huh,’ Aneka grunted. ‘Can’t I just feel sorry for myself for a couple more days?’