Steel Beneath the Skin (21 page)

‘Yeah,’ Aneka said, ‘I kind of have proof of that myself.’

Ella gave her a grin that was more like a grimace. ‘They also said that the Xinti had begun attacking herosian colony worlds, frequently leaving no survivors. The attacks were unprovoked and it seemed like the Xinti had used their experimental evidence to find weaknesses in potential targets. That meant everyone was at risk. There was a huge effort to build warships and the war began in earnest soon after that.’

‘And for all the losses we suffered,’ Gillian said, ‘we have always thought that it was a just war. We were fighting against an enemy who was callous, methodical, and bent on the subjugation or destruction of all the other races. The Herosians lost their home world, we lost Old Earth, but we survived and the Jenlay are now the dominant race in the galaxy.’

Aneka frowned; she felt like she could see where this was going. ‘But now you’re reading this from the Xinti point of view.’

The archaeologist nodded. ‘And it paints a different picture. There are detailed reports of an assault on a xinti colony. They had lost three worlds before then with no evidence of the perpetrators, but this time they knew who had done it and retaliated.’ She paused to take another drink. ‘According to these records, the Herosians started the war by attacking the Xinti. They then persuaded the other races that the Xinti were the aggressors and got us all to fight their war for them.’

‘Well,’ Ella said into the silence which followed, ‘we have to take into account that this is written by the Xinti and so just as subjective as the herosian reports of the same period… But I can believe it.’

‘That’s what bothers me,’ Gillian agreed. She looked at Aneka, feeling some explanation was required. ‘Herosians are… well, you’ve likely seen pictures of them in the basic familiarisation material. They look vaguely like reptiles. Tough, scaly skin, clawed hands, intolerant of low temperatures, though they are warm-blooded. They have a rather large gender imbalance, around three males are born for each female, and the result is that the males are constantly striving to improve their status and wealth to improve their chances of attracting a mate. I suppose you could say the same about jenlay, but with herosians it’s rather more pronounced.’

‘You don’t meet many females,’ Ella added, ‘but they’re not much better than the males. Spoiled would be the best description. They have an almost unbelievable sense of entitlement because they’re given anything they want to keep them with their husband.’

‘And these are the things which are going to hate me because my body was built by the Xinti?’ Aneka asked.

‘The same,’ Gillian said, nodding, ‘though this sheds a new light on that hatred. If they are the ones who started the war, why such vehement hatred? Whatever, this is going to cause enormous political issues. The Herosians would not wish this information known, I suspect.’

‘So what do we do?’ Ella asked.

‘Learn everything we can from these records before we get home. I’d like to store some reports and some of the files in Al’s memory if I may, Aneka? The Administration may decide to take the data into protective custody, but they don’t have to know we’ve got some of it hidden away.’

‘Of course,’ Aneka replied and then grinned. ‘Al says it’s his duty to ensure the survival of what little xinti culture there is.’

‘It’s
our
duty,’ Gillian replied soberly. ‘Even if the Xinti were really the monsters current history has made them out to be, we owe it to history to discover all we can about them.’

A message appeared in Aneka’s vision field.
I like her.
She smiled, she did too. Then the thought hit her that her inbuilt computer had preferences in the people she associated with. Was that a good thing?

16.1.524 FSC.

The legal code was certainly boring and, despite Aneka’s vague hope that lawyers might have died out in the last millennium, it appeared to be written in the kind of legalese she was used to hating in her time. She was glad she had chosen to lie down to read through it, the text scrolling past in-vision.

As far as she could tell, even if Al was a volitional AI by the terms of the law, and it was looking more and more like it, she could not be harmed for having him as part of her body, and he could not be removed simply for existing. He could be destroyed if he did something for which the death penalty applied, but she thought he was unlikely to commit treason or murder more than five people.

Unless hiding the entire xinti archive, every last file, was going to count as treason at some point in the future. They had vastly underestimated his storage capacity, and he had quietly filed away everything the ship’s computer had decrypted on being given the directive to do so. She had asked him what his storage capacity was, but ten zetabytes meant absolutely nothing to her.

‘Can you speak?’ she asked in the silence of her mind.

‘Yes.’ The voice was soft, but masculine. It whispered in her ears, it seemed, though she was fairly sure that the computer was speaking directly into her brain.

‘Then why haven’t you spoken before?’

‘If your conditioning had been completed, I would have. The Xinti would have fully trained you in the use of your body. As it was, you were shaken enough by the discovery of your situation. A voice in your head seemed… unwise.’

She let that sink in for a second. ‘So you just let me think you were nothing but a smart computer?’

‘I knew you would figure it out eventually. You’re smarter than I am. I let you come to your own conclusions and tried to give you the information you needed when you needed it.’

‘Okay. So there’s more to this body than I’ve already figured out?’

‘You have grasped the fundamentals. There are nuances I can teach you, and a few things you haven’t discovered. I also have files on your weapons and systems you may find instructive.’

Aneka nodded. ‘We’ll start tomorrow.’

21.5.524 FSC.

The Garnet Hyde was a hive of activity once again after six months of near silence. Aneka moved through the people rushing about in preparation with a serene calm she did not entirely feel, performing whatever task she was given by Gillian or Bashford as they asked for it. They were preparing for orbital insertion, and everything had to be ready, but she had never been through this kind of operation, and she was as much an observer as she was a participant.

In-vision she watched the ship’s flight plan as it neared warp-exit. An indicator on the display told her that that would happen in five minutes and forty seconds. Another display indicated the current locations of each of the crew within the ship. Al had spent the last five months walking her through what her systems could provide for her, giving her opportunities to work with all the information she could have at her fingertips in controlled situations, and she was now quite used to spreading her attention across multiple displays and the real world.

It had been something of a revelation that her mind, now running on an electronic device instead of an organic one, could and did operate far faster than it used to. It had taken her a while to get used to. She ran on a dedicated computer a little smaller than her brain had been, set within her heavily armoured skull. Al was a separate entity from her, running on one of the two cores of her secondary computer, but he was able to “read” her thoughts while she was largely unaware of him until he chose to interact with her. She had not been sure that she liked that at first, but there seemed to be no adverse effect. He had been designed as both a support AI and an observer; the Xinti had wanted someone analysing Aneka’s reactions as well as having her reports on what was happening.

She was heading for the cargo hold to check with Bashford when she heard the engine note change. Her hearing had better discrimination now than she was used to, and she could also hear frequencies normal humans could not. The steady ultrasonic hum of the warp drives had been a constant tone in the background for months now. She had not even realised she was hearing something that everyone else could not until Al had displayed a Fourier Transform graph, and explained what it was, which showed that the harmonics she was hearing were in the fifty kilohertz range. Now she heard them rise sharply and then fall away entirely as the warp field collapsed and they entered normal flight. A second later she picked up the roar of the fusion torch engines powering up, along with the low frequency harmonics it generated, as the Hyde’s computer adjusted their velocity.

‘We just dropped out of warp,’ she said to Bashford as she entered the hold. ‘We’ll be docking with the station in fifteen minutes.’

‘Your fancy graphics telling you that?’ He did not turn or look up, he was checking off consignment numbers on a fold out tablet.

‘The time, yes. I heard the engines switch over.’

‘Huh. I’m sure a talent like that could be useful. Maybe you should learn some drive mechanics.’

‘I’ll put it on the list.’ He grunted in response, a half-laugh. ‘It’s a long list. You just about done here? Need any help?’

‘I’m… done, so no.’ He pushed the side of the screen in, rolling it into the handgrip. ‘You can assist me by walking back to the mess with me. Everything should be locked down and ready for transport. It’s just a waiting game now.’

Aneka nodded. ‘The others are already there.’

‘You seem to have spent the time getting here well,’ he said once they were out in the corridor. ‘You seem more comfortable in yourself.’

‘Yes. I did put in some more time on equipment familiarisation, but I’ve learned to use my body a lot better too. Basic military strategy, know yourself and you’ll win half your battles.’

‘Huh, you’ve read Gobari?’

‘Sun Tzu.’

Bashford frowned. ‘I don’t believe I know that one.’

‘Probably not, it was written about twenty-five centuries before my time. I’d imagine that’s something else that’s been lost, but the principles applied to warfare in my time so I’m not surprised they apply to space too.’ She grinned. ‘And The Art of War is easier to read than The Book of Five Rings.’

‘I’ll take your word on that.’

‘Not much choice. What’s the procedure when we dock?’

‘There’s not much to do. The stuff down in the hold will be taken off and shipped down to the university by the cargo handlers. It’s largely automated. We’re pre-cleared for transit, so it’s just a case of picking up your personal luggage and making your way through to the shuttle. There’s a regular service, every hour, on the hour.’

‘Very efficient. I guess spaceflight works the same now as air travel did in my time. I’m kind of looking forward to it. Getting my feet back on earth, I mean. Seeing the new world I’m supposed to be living in.’

‘Kind of?’

‘Some trepidation too.’

‘You’ll be fine. There’s nothing to fear down there and you’ve got Ella and Gillian to help you adjust.’

‘Yeah,’ Aneka replied, but she was more worried about the tests being planned for her than adjusting to a new society.

Flight 109B

If the naval station at Harriamon was huge, the orbital transfer station they had passed through to board the shuttle down to New Earth was enormous. It had a staff of around ten thousand permanently on station, two hotels, a hospital, a park! There were ships moving in and out of it constantly, with places for two vessels larger than it to dock outside the hull. And it was just one of two such stations in geosynchronous orbit over the planet.

Aneka had taken the window seat when they got aboard the shuttle and watched as the huge station receded from them. Now her attention was focussed instead on the planet, New Earth, her new home since someone had incinerated the last one.

She had to admit, to a lay-person, it looked a pretty good match. The air pressure was higher, but the gravity was essentially identical and it looked to be the same size. There was no Moon; no moons of any kind, in fact, unless you counted the artificial ones. It seemed to have more or less the same amount of land surface. The land looked a deeper green in places, presumably from more plant life. The night side did not show as much city light as she would have expected. The data she had read said that the planet had a population of around twenty-five million, which was significantly lower than the seven billion Old Earth had had.

‘What do you think?’ Ella said from the seat beside her.

‘It’s… beautiful. I never saw the old one from space. I mean, hardly anyone had by my time. I saw pictures, videos, but never the real thing. It’s still a bit of a rush just seeing a planet from this height, but… yeah, it’s beautiful.’

Ella grinned and undid her seat straps. ‘Come on, let’s go up to the bar.’

The bar was a moderately large room with picture windows along the outside and a row of tables in the centre. There were no staff, just machines which dispensed small canisters of drink, but at least those were complimentary. Ella got herself something which claimed it was gin and tonic. Aneka had always hated drinking alcohol on aircraft, and now there was no point, so she got a fruit juice for something to drink and followed Ella to sit on a stool at one of the windows.

‘You know,’ Aneka said, ‘artificial gravity is still something of a surprise. I mean, back in my day that was
real
science-fiction.’

‘Graviton flow control technology was one of the key developments made during the early years of the Federation. I can’t imagine what spaceflight was like before it, frankly. And it makes landing these ships a whole lot easier.’

‘Anti-gravity? I didn’t think this thing had the acceleration to get off a planet.’

‘They don’t. I think a Concordia Class is rated about a hundredth of a G.’

‘Huh, you couldn’t lift off an asteroid with that.’ Aneka looked out at the planet below. One of the two continental landmasses was visible in daylight, a long, vaguely figure-eight shaped, dark mass set between blue oceans. ‘Is that where we’re going?’

‘Yeah,’ Ella replied, pointing out toward the planet and then having second thoughts. ‘Well, actually, from here you can’t really see the spaceport, or the university. Um, the continent down there is called Mericiana…’ She paused as Aneka coughed. ‘…and you can see the dark strip down the east side, that’s the main city, Yorkbridge.’ Aneka was making slightly strangled noises now. ‘What’s funny?’