Author: Niall Teasdale
Date: 2015-03-30 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Lesbian; Space Opera; Erotica; Space; Romance
Description: Since the end of the Herosian War, the galaxy has seen almost thirty years of peace and quiet.And then Ella went and had an affair…
Publisher: Smashwords Edition

Hope

An Aneka Jansen
Novel

By Niall Teasdale

Copyright 2015 Niall Teasdale

Amazon Kindle Edition

Contents

Part One: The Proper Use of Weapons

Part Two: Standards

Part Three: Ballistic Intelligence Acquisition

Part Four: Ariadne and the Pirate Queen

Part Five: Making Omelette

Part Six: The Death of Captain Kade

Part Seven: Hope

Part Eight: New Haven

Part Nine: Bright Light of the Sun

Part One: The Proper Use of Weapons

Carson City, Gariamon, 6.11.559 FSC.

Whoever had named Carson City had had something of a wry sense of humour. Nestled in a small valley on the edge of the Carson Range, which at no point exceeded two hundred metres altitude, it had seven bars, four brothels, nine guesthouses, one hotel, a general store, a prospecting supplies shop, an assay office, and around two hundred permanent inhabitants. The itinerant population was higher due to the people who used it as a supply base for their travels in the hills, and the place looked like what someone would have created if they wanted to film a sci-fi western.

Tully’s was not the most popular bar in Carson City, but it had its fans. That was if ‘fan’ meant someone who liked to drink themselves into a stupor in relative solitude among others of a like mind. Some of them drank in solitude in a group, but they were all alone even when they were talking to someone else. You could do business in Tully’s, especially business you wanted kept quiet, because no one listened to what was going on around them and that, more than anything, was what kept the place afloat: the local criminal gangs left it alone so long as they could use it for quiet meetings.

Everyone looked at the door when it opened, letting in a blast of cool air, and yet no one really looked at the door: the clientele had mastered the art of interested disinterest and most of them were back to their drinks in an instant having dismissed the woman walking in as one of the many prostitutes the town hosted to relieve prospectors of their hard-earned cash. Gulliver Tully was allowed to take a longer look, and so his eyes went from the mass of tousled, iridescently purple hair which fell to the upper slopes of her breasts, down past those substantial breasts, the narrow waist, the wide hips, to the long legs, and that was when he saw the large handgun strapped to her right thigh. The hookers were generally armed, but they were more discreet about it.

He allowed himself further assessment as she strode over to the bar. She was tall and her body showed muscle, nothing extreme, but her shoulders showed development and her abs, showing under the tight, deep-purple, high-hipped unitard she was wearing, were well defined. Her thighs looked like they could crush a man to death. The brief outfit and no filter mask suggested she was tough and local: it was cold outside and extended exposure to the unfiltered atmosphere tended to make you sick. The gun and the knee-high, grey work boots she was wearing did not really fit with the suit or the hair, which gave her an ‘I just got out of bed and I wasn’t sleeping’ look. Tully was not a fan of incongruity, though his vocabulary was not large enough to include the word, but he was in favour of not asking too many questions. He asked one.

‘Drink?’

She scanned the tariff over the bar. ‘What’s the beer like?’

‘Gnat’s piss,’ Tully replied flatly. ‘I lie. The lager’s gnat’s piss, and the beer is gnat’s piss with stuff floating in it.’

‘Glass of the thicker gnat’s piss then.’

She looked around the room briefly while he pulled her beer. No one looked back. Then she dropped a note on the counter, took her drink and walked over to one of the side tables, sitting with her back to the wall. Tully noted that she had a clear view of the door and that that big gun of hers was hidden under the small, round, plastic table. He was starting to have a bad feeling about this one.

Five minutes later, when the tough in the leather jacket walked in, Tully’s assessment was confirmed. The man looked like one of the local goons who came by now and then, and the bulge under his jacket suggested he was armed, though that was not especially unusual. The fact that he made straight for the woman indicated that he was there with a purpose and that he knew exactly who he was going to do that purpose to.

‘You’ve been asking questions,’ the thug said. ‘You’ve been looking for people.’

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I’m looking for some friends from off-world. You don’t know where I could find them, do you?’

Tully, watching from the bar, made his assessment of the situation and then checked that there was no one, especially himself, in the line of fire.

‘Well, I just came from your “friends,”’ the man stated, ‘and they told me they don’t want anything to do with you. They said I should forcefully explain to you that they don’t want–’

‘Thank you,’ the woman said, cutting him off.

He frowned at her. ‘What?’

She leaned back in her seat. ‘I’m going to give you some free advice, not that it’s going to be much use to you, obviously, but I learned it from watching Star Wars, which you’ve never seen, and I think it’s something you should know. Never, under circumstances like these, ever let the person you’re trying to intimidate get her hands under the table.’

His eyes widened and he started to reach for his gun a fraction of a second before the table exploded, followed by the thug’s chest. The woman drained the remainder of her glass and placed it on what was left of the table before getting to her feet and walking around to the corpse. A quick search produced a small fob, the key transmitter for a vehicle of some kind, and with that in hand, she got to her feet and started for the door.

‘Sorry about the mess,’ she said as she passed Tully. ‘The beer wasn’t that bad.’

The thing that was surprising Tully was not the casual murder, that happened, or the theft, but that her hair was changing as she walked. The colour had started to fade as she stood up and by the time she had reached the door, the tousled mass had drawn back to her shoulders and was a vague mauve.

She stopped outside and thumbed the key. On her right there was the sound of locks disengaging and she headed that way. By the time she had reached the ground car, her hair was a short, white cap. Opening the door, Aneka Jansen slipped behind the wheel and hit the start-up button.

‘Al?’ she asked silently.

‘The car’s navigation system indicates that his last stop was a brothel on the edge of town,’ Al replied from within her.

‘They must have paid him up front. Stupid, considering.’

‘Prior to that he was at an industrial park on the outskirts of Duchema territory.’

Aneka gave a grunt of displeasure and pulled the door closed. ‘Let’s get out there. They’re the last people we want getting their hands on this stuff.’

~~~

Gariamon was a corporate planet. The neighbouring world, Elspa, had been settled by refugees from Old Earth after the Xinti War and they had built their society around hard work and a corporate ethic. Gariamon was simply the latest world they had selected to strip-mine of its resources and discard. Aneka was unimpressed with their attitude, but then she was not trying to recruit them.

It meant that the planet was run, for the most part, by the large mining corporations based out of Elspa. Gariamon had an abundance of minerals, and in every part of the planet where they could be extracted in bulk, the corporations ran huge mines and kept their employees happy and controlled. Outside those states, in places like Carson City, independent prospectors were allowed to function because it was uneconomic to run large facilities. In the rare cases where an independent actually stumbled across something major, they would be persuaded to hand it over. Until then, they had some freedom.

Meanwhile, the corporations were always busy trying to get ahead of their competitors. They hoarded finds and technological discoveries, they spied, they cheated as much as the complex legal code of Elspa would allow, and sometimes they got more violent. And that atmosphere was what had brought the people Aneka was hunting to Gariamon.

The edge of the Duchema Clean Mining Corporation’s territory was marked on the eastern side by a river which had once been about a hundred metres wide and was now a trickle since Duchema siphoned off most of the water for their ‘clean’ mining operation. The polluted mess which was left was pumped back into the valley several kilometres downstream, well out of range of anyone’s noses. Aneka crossed the river quickly and easily, avoiding the bridge with the corporate checkpoint on it. The last thing she wanted was Duchema knowing she was there; technically, she was not even on the planet.

‘Gwy? What do you have on sensors?’

‘I’m detecting twelve humanoids within the building, Aneka.’ Her ship, invisible behind a cloaking screen nothing on the planet could penetrate, was in geosynchronous orbit over the equator and her sensors were still capable of penetrating a Plascrete structure at over forty thousand kilometres. ‘Vital signs and metabolic readings tend to indicate Human or Jenlay. General posture indicates eight armed guards.’

‘Okay, give Al a positional mapping and we’ll work out a viable penetration route.’

The building appeared to be some sort of warehouse, a hundred metres by fifty and probably three storeys high. It was surrounded by a chain-link fence two metres high, which she vaulted smoothly before continuing on to the wall.

‘Options?’ she asked.

‘Without a full internal schematic, this is conjecture,’ Al replied, ‘but given the positions of the guards and the aerial photographs from Gwy, I believe your best option is via the roof. There is an access door on the south-east corner and a fire escape beside it.’

Aneka glanced south, spotted the three-stage stairway down the side of the building and headed for it. ‘Are you getting any network traffic?’

‘The building has no internal network. I am picking up two standard communications devices. I am attempting to gain access… and we have a bug in someone’s pocket.’

‘…exactly is this thing? Looks like a standard blast rifle.’ The voice was muffled by the pocket the microphone was probably in, but Aneka could tell the speaker was a local: the accent was distinct and the language was the Elspa variant of English.

‘That, my friend, is the latest thing in urban pacification.’ The second voice had a flatter accent with the slight American sound to it which marked the speaker as definitely not an Elspa citizen. ‘Yes, it’s a blaster, but this fires positrons. It’s essentially the same kind of weapon that the Xinti used during the war to such effect. Hit someone with that and they won’t be getting back up, and neither will the people standing around them.’

‘Great,’ Aneka muttered to herself. The word had a double edge: these men were selling antimatter particle weapons into an unstable political environment, but on the plus side she had actually found them, finally. Reaching the roof door, she began working on the lock.

‘And you can supply in bulk?’ the first speaker asked.

‘As much as you need.’

‘Okay… What else do you have?’

‘Keep an eye on them,’ Aneka said silently as she slipped into the building and the voices were cut off.

‘His personal unit is being most informative,’ Al commented. ‘I have contacts, shipping routes, schedules, everything Winter wanted.’

‘Huh, bloody amateurs.’

A ladder let Aneka down onto a gantry hung within the cavernous building. It did seem to be a warehouse, largely filled with mothballed heavy vehicles. There were a few huge trucks and the rest seemed to be mobile drills and excavators. It certainly gave plenty of opportunity for cover, but the little scene playing out in the centre of the room was quite visible from Aneka’s vantage point above.

The buyers were typical corporate types, dressed in the high-collared suits which seemed to be the current fashion. The salesman was trying to fit in, but his suit looked slightly wrong and Aneka suspected that it was actually made from reactive fibres. Basically the guy was dressed in a bulletproof jacket. His colleague was not even trying to look like a local: his body armour was a state-of-the-art powered exoskeleton with hyperdense plating. He had, however, neglected to wear a helmet.

The guards needed to be taken down first and they were spread out around the room. It was going to take time…

‘Mister Jarrow, that’s the salesman, appears to be in full flow,’ Al informed her. ‘He has moved on to forty-millimetre plasma grenades and is being quite effusive regarding their destructive potential.’

‘Let’s hope he has a few more things to enthuse over.’ Aneka made her way across the gantry as fast as stealth would allow.

The guard with the sniper rifle keeping watch from a block of offices hung from the roof frame was the first to go. She snapped his neck before he even knew he was not alone and then found the staircase down to ground level. There were four men patrolling the perimeter of the room and three standing guard at the doors. They were armed with Gauss rifles, not a real threat to her, but she wanted them taken out cleanly so she took her time over it, marvelling at the brilliance of ensuring that not one man could see any of the others once the sniper was gone.

Crushing the last man’s throat with a single, swift blow to the windpipe, she caught his falling body and lowered him to the ground. ‘Gwy, I’ll be needing extraction pretty soon,’ she said as she started making her way through the maze of vehicles to where the meeting was happening.

‘I am on my way,’ Gwy responded.

Nodding to herself, Aneka rounded a truck that was twice her height and found herself looking at the four remaining men.

‘As you can see,’ Jarrow was saying, ‘this weaponry will give you a significant advantage over your competitors. And for such a small price.’

‘A thousand tonnes of gold is hardly a “small” price, Mister Jarrow.’ Closer now, Aneka could see that the chief negotiator was an older man, probably fairly senior in Duchema. The Elspans lived long, quite active lives, but they had none of the genetic advantages Jenlay did, and the executive was greying and starting to show lines around his eyes and across his brow.

‘Too much for total control of your planet?’

‘Weapons are not effective if the men using them are dead. What about protection?’

‘Ah yes. My associate is wearing our latest body armour. The motorised exoskeleton enhances physical strength and speed, even over rough ground. The plating is a hyperdense alloy which can stop anything up to and including any anti-armour weapons your competitors have–’

There was a loud thud and the bodyguard’s head more or less exploded. Aneka appeared beside Jarrow, already slipping her gun into its holster. ‘But as you can see, it’s fuck all use if you forget the helmet,’ she said.

Jarrow started to move. He was fast for a salesman and was already two steps away, heading for one of the doors when Aneka held out her hand and fired off a pulse from the force weapon in her arm. There was a grunt as all the air left his lungs in an instant and then a clang as he slammed into the side of an excavator bucket.

Aneka smiled at the Elspans. ‘Good afternoon, I’m Aneka and I’ll be conducting the second part of your product demonstration.’

The younger exec moved, grabbing one of the blaster rifles from the top of a case and pointing it at her. He looked like he was about to wet himself. ‘D-d-don’t come any closer!’

Aneka kept smiling. ‘That’s not going to do you much good. No power cell.’ He looked down at the weapon, fear and frustration evident, as well as distrust. ‘Those blocky things in the case?’ She waved a hand at the metallised crate the guns were stored in and he looked down, grabbing one of the cell units. ‘That’s right. Locks in right under the grip. It’s an up-and-back motion… There you go.’

He pointed the rifle at her again and she shook her head. ‘You need to turn the sighting system on. You see, these things need an accurate range to target to fire properly and they’re usually stored in a locked-down state. It’s a lot safer, considering you’re dealing with an antimatter system.’ The man was frantically looking for the ‘on’ switch now. ‘It’s that red slider beside the sight. Push it forward.’

Once more he pointed the rifle at her, looking no more confident than he had when it was an inert lump of plastic and metal. ‘Great!’ Aneka said, her smile broadening. ‘Now you are ready to really kick some arse. Seriously, those things are fucking lethal, but there are a few important safety tips regarding their use, and the first of those is–’

She stepped forward and his finger closed on the trigger. The air sparkled in front of him as an ultraviolet laser carved a channel in the air between the gun and Aneka where it hit her force screen provoking a shimmering wave of light to dance across its surface. The beam was followed, a fraction of a second later, by a few positrons which hit the shield and stopped briefly, having nothing to interact with, before the vacuum collapsed and they interacted with the protons in the air. Aneka vanished in a wave of white light, which washed over her shield, and the backwash from the explosion hit the two Elspans in the face, staggering them back and leaving them blinking.

When their vision had cleared, Aneka was still smiling at them. ‘Never use one of them at close range unless you’re wearing body armour,’ she continued. ‘And when Mister Jarrow said those things were state of the art, he was lying like a son of a bitch. I’m the state of the art. Now put that gun down before you hurt yourself and start running.’

As they bolted towards one of the doors, Aneka walked over to the crate of grenades and began setting the timer rings mounted on the top of the stubby cylinders.

‘Gwy? You in the neighbourhood?’

‘I am fifteen seconds out. There are armoured vehicles heading in your direction, but I will be there at least forty-three seconds before they arrive.’

‘Put down outside and prepare for immediate dust-off.’ Aneka turned the ring on the grenade she was holding to sixty seconds and then set three more before turning and walking swiftly towards the doors. Her cloaking system cut in on the second stride and she vanished from sight in a flicker of distorted light.

Gwy, 7.11.559 FSC.

Aneka watched from the flight chair as Gwy carefully manoeuvred herself into the hangar bay of a light wormhole carrier. The smaller transports were primarily designed for cargo and shuttles; sliding a larger vessel like Gwy into the bay and locking her down took precision and time. However, the smaller ships were also designed for more discreet insertions. The Elspans were not going to notice the cloaked vessels as they got ready to leave.

‘At least we’ll be back home soon,’ Aneka said, sighing. ‘It seems like years…’

‘A little over two hundred standard days,’ Gwy informed her. ‘Not even one year.’

‘I said it seems like years.’

‘Yes. Sorry, I’m concentrating.’

‘Gwy, you can perform routine operations while calculating pi to a billion places.’

‘I do not want any scratches on my hull when I see Aggy again.’

Aneka smirked. ‘No, of course not.’

‘Docking clamps are in place. Wormhole transition in one minute, seventeen seconds. I have received a message that Cassandra is aboard the transport and on her way down.’

Frowning, Aneka slipped out of her seat and started for the gravity lift at the back of the room. ‘Cassandra’s here but not Ella?’

‘Yes. Cassandra needs to speak with you, urgently.’

The tall, blonde android was as beautiful as ever, long legs on show thanks to the simple, white mini-dress she was wearing. The frown she was wearing was unlike her, however, and the fact that she did not immediately hug her friend and the host of her boyfriend tended to indicate that something was very wrong.

‘Cassandra,’ Aneka said as soon as the AI was out of the airlock, ‘what’s up? Winter doesn’t want me somewhere–’

‘We’re heading out from the Junction as soon as we get there, but it’s not for Winter,’ Cassandra interrupted. ‘You know that Ella was going to a dig on Lacora?’

‘It was in the final planning stages when I left.’

‘Yes. Something’s happened. The site was attacked. The Amethyst Hyde is out there now trying to determine exactly what happened, but… Ella’s missing.’

Aneka stared at her for a second and then looked up. ‘Gwy? Where’s that fucking wormhole?’

Lacora.

The camp facility which had been set up on Lacora was extensive. There was a mystery surrounding the planet, a mystery which had wiped out the native sentient species and two attempts at Human colonisation before and after the Xinti War. The base had been set up to prevent the same fate befalling those investigating it and, as far as Aneka could tell on first viewing, it had failed.

That impression lasted long enough for her to take in the damage properly. No form of natural disaster had hit the prefabricated structures. She could see impact points from particle beam weapons, evidence of explosives. Someone had attacked this place with fairly sophisticated weaponry. Someone from off-world.

Winter was there, standing in what appeared to be a ruined laboratory when Aneka found her. ‘I want everything shipped back to Shadataga for analysis,’ the AI was saying. ‘All of it. Maybe there’s something…’ She trailed off as she spotted Aneka. ‘We’re doing everything we can,’ she said.

‘I’m sure you are, but what do you have?’

‘Unfortunately, very little. Whoever is responsible for this went to a great deal of trouble to eliminate the evidence.’

Aneka looked around. Laboratory equipment lay on the floor, broken for the most part. What might once have been a computer server, the main processor for the base, looked like it had been broken open before someone set off a plasma grenade inside the case. There was blood on the walls…

‘You think you can get anything out of the computer?’

‘Unlikely,’ Winter admitted, ‘but we may be able to get scraps from the memory. We have the reports of their progress, but there was nothing indicating any problems before they missed their last check-in. I came out on the Hyde as soon as we failed to raise them.’

‘Cassandra said Ella was missing.’

‘We’ve identified all of the bodies. Ella is the only person unaccounted for. We’ve scanned the entire planet and there’s no sign of her.’

Aneka looked at her. ‘The only one? How many–’

‘Thirty-two. Several died in the initial attack, but most of them were executed. This was brutal, Aneka.’

‘Then why keep Ella alive? Never mind that. How much of a head start do they have?’

‘We think they were hit the day after their last check-in. The twenty-first–’

‘Sixteen days… They could be just about anywhere. Maximum of about fifty parsecs out, but that’s going to cover a lot of space.’

‘I would suggest more like thirty parsecs, but probably much closer. I don’t believe it was coincidence that the attack happened so soon after the check-in. I think they were being watched. It gave them almost ten days before we noticed–’

‘They were checking in every ten days? I normally set a five-day period for potentially dangerous sites.’

‘You were not here. Ian Devor was the lead facilitator. Was being the operative word. He was one of the ones we found executed.’

Aneka gave a grunt of displeasure. ‘Devor? How did that sloppy bastard get this?’

‘Ella requested him,’ Bashford stated as he walked into the room. He came in through a wall: using the door seemed pointless. ‘I know you don’t like him, but she seemed to get on with him well enough and he’s not as incompetent as you think. Besides, you were busy.’

Aneka looked around and then back at the bald, muscular Head of Vocational Training. ‘I’m going to reserve judgement on his competence until you’ve worked out how this happened.’

Bashford gave a slight shrug as though conceding the point and then said, ‘This was a military operation. If you’d been here… maybe, but…’ He turned to look at Winter. ‘Have you told her what happened to this building?’

‘No. It was a missile strike, we think. Tore open the side and killed at least three people. It also hurt Ella. We found blood, but no body so–’

‘Ella’s tough,’ Aneka stated flatly. ‘We made her tough. What’s the plan?’

‘We’ve combed every inch of this place,’ Winter stated. ‘I’m having the entire facility boxed up and taken back to Shadataga. We’ll recreate it there and go over it with everything we have.’

Aneka nodded sullenly. ‘Where are the bodies?’

‘On the Hyde,’ Bashford said. ‘What’s left of them anyway.’

‘I want to see them.’

Amethyst Hyde.

Each of the corpses from Lacora had been sealed into an individual container and placed in one of the Hyde’s cargo bays, and even then the only reason Aggy was allowing Aneka in to see them was that she was immune to every known viral and bacterial agent.

‘This… looks unnervingly familiar,’ Aneka said as she looked down at the twisted shape through its casing. There was a crystalline shimmer to the skin, as though something had skimmed the body over with silica.

‘Ella believed the agent which killed the Lacorans was the original virus upon which the Chuck Virus was based,’ Aggy replied. She was a hologram, standing beside Aneka as much to give her company as for information.

‘Shit. Thirty years on and that’s still coming back to haunt us. I thought that was artificial, based on Xinti tech?’

‘It is. Artificial anyway. This is a simpler nanovirus than the one we’ve met before. Someone enhanced its capabilities and made it more species specific. This one affects more or less any organic life form, aside from plant life.’

‘Why the Hell would someone make something like that? Uh, that was rhetorical. I know why.’

‘Indeed. Warfare. Our own nanotechnology was keeping it off the researchers while they were alive, but when they died it began eating. It seems that it simply converts the body into a viral production machine rather than a chuck. These bodies are showing minimal signs of biological activity even now, but it seems that converting a corpse is not effective. Still, we’ll need to ensure the virus is dead before we can perform proper burials.’

Aneka nodded. ‘Lena Freemont. She was only seventy. Younger than Ella was when I first met her…’

‘You’ll find her, Aneka. I have every confidence in you doing so.’

Aneka looked at the golden woman standing beside her and nodded again, more slowly this time. ‘I’m going to have to take Gwy away from you again. Sorry.’

‘I know.’

‘You’ll have tonight. I need to review a few options. I can’t run off hunting for her without somewhere to start.’

‘No, of course not. I have assessed the situation and sent the most probable targets to Gwy for your consideration.’

‘Thank you. Fast work.’

‘Not really. As soon as we found out Ella was missing, I knew you would be going after her. None of us expect you to sit around and wait.’

Aneka managed a bleak smile. ‘I’m that obvious?’

‘Under the circumstances, yes.’

‘Al,’ Aneka said silently, ‘you’d better make sure you’ve said farewell to Cassandra–’

‘If you honestly believe she won’t be coming with us,’ her AI interrupted, ‘then I’m going to have to believe that worry is incapacitating you to an unacceptable degree.’

Gwy.

‘I love her too,’ Cassandra stated firmly, ‘and you will need all the help you can get to find her.’ She was looking calm, but determined, and Aneka had already figured out that there would be no dissuading her, but she had to try…

‘But–’

‘And I have been apart from my own love for quite long enough. Not wishing to make this sound like a hopeless task, it could require months of searching to find Ella and I am unwilling to be separated from Al for that long when there is no need. I am coming too.’

To emphasise the point, the android settled her head on Al’s shoulder. She was perched on his lap on the bed in Gwy’s cabin. It had the advantage of privacy, if you discounted the fact that Gwy would tell Aggy what had transpired. Since everyone seemed to consider what was going to happen a foregone conclusion, that did not seem like an issue.

‘I have already made the necessary arrangements,’ Cassandra went on. ‘Everything is covered. My students have been allocated new tutors. Other lecturers can handle my timetable. I started arranging everything as soon as I heard she was missing.’ She shifted slightly, her brow wrinkling a little. ‘There is something… I debated whether I should say anything, but keeping it secret seems… wrong.’

Aneka raised an eyebrow. ‘Cassandra?’

‘Ella was having an affair.’

‘Oh.’

Cassandra’s frown deepened. ‘You do not seem particularly shocked.’

‘I… Maybe later. There were signs. When she came back from the planning trip to Lacora she was behaving… There was something not right. Hindsight suggests guilt. Please tell me it wasn’t Devor.’

‘Uh…’

‘No wonder she was going behind my back! Damn, I thought she had taste! Cheating on me is one thing, but Devor… Jesus.’

‘Does this change–’

‘Of course not!’ Aneka shook her head. ‘We’ve been together, what? Thirty years, give or take. We were both getting complacent. I should have done something when I noticed she hadn’t complained about me wearing clothes she couldn’t see my boobs through.’

‘Aneka, it’s not like you overdress…’

‘Huh. Maybe not, but… Anyway, no, we’re still going to go find her, and then I can ask her when her standards dropped to rock bottom.’

Part Two: Standards

Lacora, 21.10.559 FSC.

Ella looked at the morose face in front of her. The green eyes looked sad and she was convinced there were worry lines showing on the brow. It was not good.

‘Your standards have dropped alarmingly, girl,’ she said. ‘The stress is getting to you as well. You’re distracted. Your work is slipping. Pull yourself together or you’re going home. Clear?’

There was no answer, of course, and she turned from the little mirror hung over her sink and headed back into her bedroom to get dressed. She was going to pull herself together and get on with her job. Breaking up with Ian had been the right thing to do, even if he was still trying to persuade her otherwise. Now she just needed to stick by her decision, get the job done and hope she got back to Shadataga before Aneka did. Because if Aneka got there first, she would come straight out to Lacora to do two things: see how Ella was doing and rip Ian a new one for his project plan. And if that happened it would all come out in… She decided to describe it as ‘an uncontrolled manner’ even if that sounded far too clinical. Sometimes being a psychologist was a pain.

Dressed in a light environment suit, she let herself out through the airlock and started across the camp’s square to the main laboratory. The camp was set up on four sides of an open central area which they used for parking vehicles and storing non-essential equipment. The prefabricated buildings were not linked, you had to exit one to enter another, and the airlocks were there to keep the world’s atmosphere out, originally. They had discovered that the viral agent which seemed endemic to the world was carried in water, so now the airlocks were only required because Lacora’s atmosphere was thin, breathable, but thin enough that it left you breathless if you had to exert yourself. At least a full helmet was not required for short-term exposure.

Ian appeared at her side as she walked and her spirits sank. It was stupid, and annoying. A few weeks earlier she had felt exhilarated whenever she saw him, attracted. He was easily fifty years her junior, handsome, with a full head of blue-black hair and piercing, blue eyes. His body was firmly muscled and he was tall, and lying in his arms had been a thrill. He had been so… enthusiastic. He had been something fresh and new, and…

‘I was wondering whether we could have a drink tonight and talk–’

‘No,’ Ella interrupted him.

‘You haven’t even heard what I want to talk about.’ And there was the thing which had convinced her she was right to break off their relationship. He sounded like a sulking child. There was a whining quality, a hint of recrimination; he was a teenager given the codes to a fast grav-speeder who considers it unfair when they are taken away again. He had been so attentive on the planning mission, but when she had started up with him again after Aneka had left… It was a lot like he had decided he had got the prize and did not need to put in the effort any more.

‘I know exactly what you want to talk about, and you already know what my answer will be. Now pull yourself together or I’ll be requesting a new lead facilitator on the next check-in call.’

He stopped and she kept on walking, trying not to hunch her shoulders or show too much tension. She was still not sure she could do that to him. This was his first big operation as leader and sending him back early would break him, but she had a feeling Bash’s evaluation of his work would not exactly include glowing praise… Then again, she had been the one pushing for him to run the mission. She had seen him and wanted him to be there, and she had ignored his lack of experience for the opportunity of a fling. Stupid, stupid… Aneka had never liked the man, and Ella had the horrible feeling that part of the reason he had been so keen on the affair was a desire to hurt Aneka.

The lab’s airlock finished its cycle and Ella stepped through into the room. Lena Freemont was there, peering through a binocular microscope and chewing on the end of a stylus. She liked writing notes by hand for some reason rather than using a neural transcriber or dictation. Ella allowed her the eccentricity since her work was excellent and the computers still managed to decipher the scratchings Lena made.

‘Anything new and exciting?’ Ella asked.

Lena lifted her head, blinked and then smiled. ‘Nothing really… Oh! Well, there was one thing. A bit strange and not exactly new, more like ancient.’

‘You’re being more than usually opaque, Lena.’

‘I’ve been running the protein sequences through the databases, yes?’

Ella nodded. ‘You sequenced the proteins used to construct the viral machines and you were having the computer see if it could find anything similar in the biological databases.’

‘Uh-huh. You were paying attention. I wondered as you looked distracted when I told you.’

‘Yes, well, that’s in the past, and I assume you’ve got a result.’

‘Several, but most of them I discounted.’

‘Because?’

‘Fragmentary elements of much larger structures. Only one protein matched when the virus has several structures. But two of the matches came back with wider similarities. One is the nanovirus you encountered on Eshebbon. As I indicated earlier. I now have a more thorough analysis. The two share about sixty per cent of their functional proteins.’

Ella’s face straightened and she pushed back an urge to evacuate the planet immediately. ‘The other one?’

‘That’s the really weird one. It’s a seventy-two per cent match… to the virus which the Xinti fell victim to. I need to run more tests, but I’d put money on this place being the original home of the virus that forced the Xinti into artificial bodies.’

‘Gopi! Are we safe? That virus was supposed to be–’

‘Some of the differences would make the Xinti virus more virulent and harder to isolate, and we have a few generations of advancement on the Xinti. The countermeasures we have are way better. We’re safe. Though…’

‘Lena?’

‘Well, even with the mutations… I took a good look at the Xinti virus when the match came up. I don’t get how they failed to stop it. I don’t get how these machines mutated into that form either. It’s almost like someone did it on purpose and then decided not to put their best efforts into countering it.’

Ella was silent for a second, considering her response. ‘Have you made any notes about that?’

‘No, just a passing thought really.’

‘Don’t. Keep it quiet until we can present it to the AIs. The Xinti are gone… I’m just not sure suggesting that some of them may have engineered their transition to digital minds without consulting the rest would be a great idea.’

Lena gave a slow nod. ‘You may be right, but it was a long time ago and–’

And then the world exploded.

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Ella became aware that she was conscious, but she kept her eyes closed while she assessed her situation in case it was particularly bad.

The last thing she remembered was a lot of noise and the wall of the lab rushing at her. She was fairly sure it had been part of the wall which had been moving. According to her implant, that had been over two days ago. She had been out for two days and the injuries from the impact would have been severe… And there was something which felt a bit like a medical brace around her neck and she could not move.

No… She could move, but not much. She was in restraints of some sort. Cold. Metal. She was fixed to a hard mattress at the waist, wrists, and ankles. The brace was cold against her skin, probably more metal, and it seemed to curve around her neck at the back leaving her throat exposed. More like jewellery than a neck brace.

Wondering whether she was going to regret it, she opened her eyes. It was not an especially illuminating experience. The room was well lit and very grey. At a guess, she was looking at a room on a spaceship, but it did not exactly look like a cabin. In fact, it looked more like a cell and turning her head just confirmed that perception. The door was very solid with no obvious means of opening it, and there was a toilet and sink in one corner. Checking the ceiling again, she located a small, black dome in the opposite corner which had to be some form of visual sensor.

All right, so the camp had been attacked. There was nothing on site with the explosive power to rip the lab building open, so it had to have been something from outside. They had been attacked, she had been hurt, possibly badly, but she had been healed if her biological readouts were telling the truth, and now she was clamped to a bed in a cell. And it was going to be several days before anyone on Shadataga even knew she was gone. She really should have insisted on a five-day check-in cycle; Aneka was going to be so sarcastic about this…

The door opened with a hiss of heavy-duty hydraulics. Ella noted the arrival of a man in a grey uniform, but she was distracted from a thorough analysis by the muffled screams she could hear before the door closed. It had sounded like a man, and it had been a man in a lot of pain.

‘Can you understand what I am saying?’ the new arrival asked, speaking slowly.

‘You’re speaking a dialect of English,’ Ella replied. ‘I understand English.’

He sniffed. He was well equipped for it, having a fairly strong, Roman nose mounted on the front of a moderately handsome face which had once been more handsome. Guessing ages was generally a pointless exercise just based on looks, but he was not in the flush of youth. The physique was powerful: he was tall and strong, and the muscle looked natural on him rather than bulked up. His voice was good too, resonant. The uniform was cut to fit well, though the dark grey colour did nothing for him. There was a symbol on the breast pocket of his jacket: three overlapped triangles in gold, with the middle one taller than the others.

‘I am speaking English, as it has been spoken for over three thousand years,’ he stated.

Ella grinned at him. ‘No… I’ve met someone who speaks it as it was spoken a thousand years ago, and your vowels have drifted a bit. And historically that version of English came into use around–’

‘You would be advised to keep your observations to yourself, girl. Heresy is punishable by death and we already have you on bioterrorism charges.’

‘Now wait a min–’

‘You will cooperate. You will tell us who you are working for and how this weapon you were developing is used and countered.’

‘We weren’t developing a weapon! We were studying a nanovirus which already existed!’

‘So that you could use it on us.’

‘I don’t even know who you–’ She stopped, peering at him. ‘Wait… that symbol. I’ve seen that symbol before… Old Earth historical databases… Pinnacle. You’re Pinnacle.’

‘And you wish me to believe you did not know that?’ He put the kind of disbelief into the phrase which could only stem from total disdain for his target. Well that fitted with what she knew of the Pinnacle.

‘We know you attacked Old Earth centuries ago and were beaten back. I know of someone who ran away from you people a lot more recently. Aside from that, we had no idea where you were. No one I know of has seen anything of you in decades. Longer. I’m an archaeologist. Lacora was a mystery I was trying to solve. My microbiology specialist had got some way to working out how that virus came into existence, but… What happened to her? She was in the same building as me when you attacked. What happened to my team?’

‘We required one prisoner,’ he stated flatly.

‘Bastard.’ It was barely a whisper. They were all dead? He could be lying… Somehow she doubted that.

‘The slave collar you are wearing has a neural induction circuit. On command, or if you attempt to remove it, it will cause pain.’ He paused, maybe for effect. ‘You heard the screams as I entered? That was the gunner whose misdirected strike damaged your laboratory and our evidence. He is wearing one of those collars.’ He paused again, but this time it was likely to allow that thought to sink in. ‘I will return in a few hours to begin your interrogation. I will be bringing the control for your collar with me.’

The door hissed again and he was gone. Ella was thankful when the door closed behind him, cutting off the screaming, but the idea that she might be doing the same soon had not yet entered into her head. They were all dead. All of them. And she was alone, in the hands of the Pinnacle.

~~~

It felt as though she had been lying there for days wondering when the pain would start, and Ella knew that was an unproductive line of thought so she turned her attention to what she knew of the Pinnacle.

They were, as far as she knew, a line of Humans who had set themselves up as the supreme strain of Humanity. They were, according to them, pure. Genetic alterations which had been made to many of the subspecies had been eschewed, though there had been some improvement. They were, essentially, a eugenics exercise which had become something like a religion. Her interrogator’s comment regarding heresy had confirmed that. It appeared that they were convinced that they were what Humans were meant to be like and anything else was wrong.

Centuries ago they had mounted an assault on Old Earth, their original home world, but Yrimtan had been running things then. Aneka’s more-or-less twin had reacted badly to a war fleet appearing in her system and the Pinnacle ships had been pushed back, many of them in pieces. Ella had read accounts of the battle, which was why she recognised the insignia, but they were more or less ancient history. Despite worries that the Pinnacle would return to try again after Old Earth re-joined the galactic community, no one had seen anything of them.

There had been rumours and mutterings. People spoke of a vast empire run off the backs of slaves taken from every Human subspecies. Given that the metalwork around Ella’s neck had been described as a slave collar, she was having to give more credence to the stories than she had previously allowed.

Some of them seemed extreme, maybe a little inflated to make the menace in the dark seem worse than it was. There were several stories of huge raids where entire settlements were attacked, rounded up and transported away into slavery. Some said the Pinnacle would destroy an entire planet where the population defied them. A couple of history students had attempted to verify a few of the stories, but they always hit the same wall: everything happened in some far-off place which made it difficult, if not impossible, to check the facts.

Almost as if the interrogator knew she was distracting herself from the tedium, the door opened and he walked in. Ella heard the screaming again; whoever the gunner was who had messed up, he was certainly paying for it.

‘I wish to establish the stakes in our game,’ he said without preamble. ‘This way you will know why it is important to you to tell me what I want to know.’

‘What? I don’t–’ And then she began screaming.

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Ella sat on her bed, curled into a ball in the corner, as far from the door as she could get. It was a small gesture, and useless, but it made her feel a tiny bit safer.

The man had released her from the restraints when he had finished asking her useless questions, being unsatisfied with her answers, and activating the collar. It meant she could move, though there was nowhere to go. It meant she could also take in the fairly basic, short, grey tank dress she had been put in. There was no footwear. She could feel, but not see, the collar. It was made of curved strips of metal which seemed to have been moulded around her neck, and it felt as though it was quite ornate. There were even smooth areas which might have been jewels of some sort. She got the impression that the Pinnacle did not want their slaves spoiling the view with ugly indications of their status.

She had been given food. Not bad food, actually. A stew of some sort and likely rehydrated before heating through, but it had filled her stomach. She had thought herself incapable of eating until the stuff had been in her mouth and she had realised how hungry she was. And the food had been delivered by a different man who had not said a word to her. He had been younger, but his uniform was identical to the older one. The Pinnacle, it seemed, were not big on rank insignia so there was no obvious way of determining relative seniority.

The door opened and Ella pulled herself into a tighter ball. It was her interrogator again.

‘Our medical technician remarked upon your durability,’ he said. He was really not fond of introductory statements. ‘How did you survive the explosion? You should have died. There should have been broken bones, internal damage…’

‘Over-protective girlfriend,’ Ella replied. She watched as he took his hand from his pocket, the control for the collar in it. ‘Seriously! She’s spent thirty years worrying over me getting killed in one of the stupid situations we keep finding ourselves in. My bones have been reinforced with carbon nanofibres. There’s a lattice of nanotubes around my heart that contract with the muscles and keep it pumping. I’ve got nanomachines floating around in just about every cell doing one thing or another. My lungs filter gasses and particulates from the atmosphere. Huh, I used to be able to get drunk on one glass of wine and now I can drink like a fish and I never get a hangover.’

‘We detected extensive cybernetics. Your eyes are entirely artificial.’

‘Oh, those went much earlier. I contracted a type of disease when I was young. It ate away half my face and both eyes. The facial tissue they could rebuild, but it was easier to just replace the eyes. Now we’d just regenerate the lot, but back then some things were hard to get right, like nerves, and my optic nerves were half gone.’

He gave a nod, apparently satisfied for once. ‘Are you ready to tell me about the virus now?’

‘Look, I’ve told you everything I know. I do archaeology, history, psychology. Social sciences. I know enough biology to understand some of what that virus did, but the woman who could have answered your questions was sitting beside me when you blew up the lab.’

He turned the control unit over in his hand, obviously contemplating her answer. ‘Unfortunately I believe you are telling the truth. We have what we managed to salvage from your computers. It will have to suffice.’ He took another box from a pocket, thumbed over it and spoke. ‘Have Crowthorn executed. His stupidity cost us more than we thought.’ Pushing the boxes back into his pockets, he turned to leave.

‘So what happens now?’ Ella asked quickly. ‘To me. What happens to me now?’

‘You will be taken to our Border Enforcement Station to await orders from High Command. I expect you will be tried and executed, but they may show leniency and commute that to slavery. You’d make an acceptable house slave.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, but he was already walking out the door.

Just before it closed, she heard the screams cut off suddenly. The Pinnacle did not waste time when it came to executions.

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Aside from the deliveries of food and drink, Ella was left entirely alone in her cell. That was fine by her. She had attempted, once, to engage one of her guards in conversation. Well, she had asked how long they would be travelling and he had activated her collar for a few seconds before walking out. She was a fast learner and there was no point in demonstrations of resistance, though she had no doubt that Aneka would have handled the situation differently. Of course, Aneka probably would not have been captured, and if she had, the collar would have done nothing to her, and she would have probably killed everyone on the ship within the first day…

Ella had come to the conclusion that her best chance was getting sentenced to slavery. There was some chance that she could escape at that point. With a gun in her hand, preferably two, she could do some damage. The Pinnacle people seemed strong, but she knew enough about unarmed combat that she could probably take one out before they could activate the collar, and then she would need to find weapons and a ship, and… Well, it was not exactly a great chance of escape, but it was a chance.

Her only other option was waiting to be rescued and, while Aneka and Winter could do some pretty amazing things, they would be looking for one woman in a vast expanse of space. No, Ella had to do something to help herself, even if her chances were slim.

Sealed away in her cell, she only became aware of their arrival at the Pinnacle station when her guard appeared at the door. ‘On your feet. We’re transferring you to a cell on the base.’ They were the first actual words he had said to her.

The ship outside the cell was almost as functional and grey as the cell itself. She was led down corridors to an airlock and then through into a similarly functional structure, which was presumably the interior of a space station, via some sort of docking gantry. The gantry served a secondary purpose: there was a gravity gradient as they moved down it and it allowed some adjustment. Ella felt the slight disorientation which suggested spin gravity was being used on the station, and she felt about half her normal weight by the time she was inside.

Her guard carried no weapons on him, but then he did not really need to. Ella had nowhere to go and she could be reduced to a screaming blob on the floor at a moment’s notice. They passed several other grey-clad men as she was walked through the corridors. None of them paid her any attention, which was possibly a good thing if the attitude continued into normal society. If the natives largely ignored slaves, then she would be largely ignored if she escaped and acted like she was just out on an errand or something.

The new cell looked a lot like the old cell, but it belonged to a larger collection of them and there was no screaming to be heard in the corridor outside. The locks, Ella noticed, were electronic but required manual entry of a six-digit code, and each had a screen beside it which was presumably there to allow someone outside to see what was happening inside. She assumed that there was a security officer or AI watching the feeds as well. Her best bet still seemed to be slavery.

As she sank onto the rock-hard bunk, Ella considered that: when slavery was your most favoured outcome, things had got really bad.

~~~

A new guard, this one a blonde instead of a brunette, appeared at the door barely thirty minutes later, which was a little surprising after so much waiting on the ship.

‘On your feet, hold your hands out,’ he snapped.

Getting up from the bed, Ella held her arms in front of her and he snapped a pair of thick, metal bracelets around her wrists. Then he grabbed her forearms and pushed her back against one of the walls, lifting her arms up and stretching them over her head. There were two solid clunks as magnets in the bracelets locked onto the metal wall.

‘What–’ Ella began.

‘Keep your mouth shut unless you’re spoken to.’ He stepped away from her to the doorway where he assumed an attention posture and waited.

He was not kept waiting long. The new officer-type looked older than Ella’s interrogator, but he was, if anything, bigger and more muscular. His hair was grey but cut so short it was hard to tell, and he had a hard, almost shrunken face as though his skin had been sucked dry and was clinging to his skull. He nodded to the guard and then turned his attention to Ella, peering at her for a few seconds before speaking.

‘Captain Horton informs me that several formalities were skipped when you were arrested and in his zeal regarding your interrogation.’ So her interrogator had been the ship’s captain. ‘I am Lieutenant Colonel Detrow, the commanding officer of Border Enforcement Station three-nine-five. You have been identified as Narrows, Ella. Is that correct?’

‘Yes,’ Ella replied. She figured that saying the minimum was the best course of action at this point.

Detrow nodded. ‘Ella Narrows, you have been indicted for crimes against Pinnacle Law, namely unlawful incursion into Pinnacle space, unlawful production of biological weapons, and conspiracy to commit terrorist acts, treason, and heresy. Evidence of your actions has been transmitted to Olympus for evaluation and sentencing. Sentence will be carried out in four days. Do you have any mitigating circumstances you wish to have considered?’

Ella blinked. It was not exactly due process, but it was a process. ‘We didn’t know we were in Pinnacle space, we weren’t making a weapon, we were studying one, and we had no intention of using it. Ever.’

‘Duly noted.’ He turned back towards the door, speaking to the guard in passing. ‘Leave her on the wall for a few hours, Ensign. I can’t stand terrorists.’

‘Sir!’ the guard snapped, raising his hand to his brow in a very rigid salute.

And a few seconds later, Ella was alone again, clamped to a wall by her wrists. She looked up as best she could at the bracelets. ‘If Aneka ever decides to speak to me again, I’m going to have to see if I can get some of these fabricated.’

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Aside from the impending threat of death, it was a little like a holiday. With nothing else to do, she turned to all the books she had said she was going to read, had stored away on her implant’s memory, and had never actually got around to.

She was in the middle of a book called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It was one of the ones on her list which she was reading as a study of how people in the past had thought the world would turn out. She called it her ‘stuff they got wrong’ list, mostly because no one had really seen the Xinti intervention or the war coming. Not that she could blame them for that, and plenty of people had come up with plots which kind of matched. Aneka had told her that they had made a film of this one and the actor in it was pretty good, though Ella had not been sure whether she meant his acting or his looks. She made a mental note to see if they had the film in the libraries on Old Earth at almost the exact instant the door opened.

It was the guard, holding those metal bracelets again. Ella got up and held her arms out and did not resist as he pinned her to the wall. It had happened a couple of times in the last few days, always when an officer of some sort was coming in to visit her. This time it was Detrow returning.

The Lieutenant Colonel regarded her dispassionately for several seconds: it seemed as though he had a habit of doing so whenever he walked in. ‘Ella Narrows, your case has been reviewed by the Office of the Pinnacle Commander and you have been found guilty on all charges. The sentence is death. Do you wish to say anything at this time?’

Ella stared at him. Yes, she had something to say. How could they do this? They had no right! There was no way they could think of killing her. She would never see Aneka again. She opened her mouth and…

‘Noted. Sentence is to be carried out on Ariadne. Put her out.’

The guard stepped forward and applied a hypo to Ella’s arm. There was a stinging sensation and an immediate feeling of numbness. ‘You can’t do… do this. I… I’m… You can’t…’ And then the world sank into darkness.

Part Three: Ballistic Intelligence Acquisition

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Local fashion on Oberian tended to be on the frumpy side, at least outside of buildings. The average daytime temperature was around minus ten Celsius and the population was basically Human. There had been some adaptation and a bit of genetic tampering: they were more tolerant of cold and used to the thin atmosphere. They still tended to wear heavy, warm clothing a lot.

With all the padding, it was frequently hard to tell what sex anyone was, but Aneka stood out, taller and substantially better endowed than the local girls. It made it harder to blend in, but Oberian did a lot of off-world trading, primarily in metals, so she was probably an outsider but nothing to worry about.

And she had been there before. It was part of the reason she had elected to start her search there. Winter had sent her there on the hunt for the gun runners and she had made a few friends as well as a couple of enemies. The enemies had learned enough about her to stay out of her way, she hoped. The ones that were still alive anyway. The others were not a concern.

So she was back in Treamon, which was one of the larger cities on the planet, and hoping that she might find some information on who was the most likely group to have hit Lacora.

Aggy had insisted on transporting them through to the system personally. It gave her a little more time with Gwy, and Aneka was certainly not going to deny them that. The two ships had the most unconventional relationship Aneka had ever heard of. Al and Cassandra had had something close when they had first met, but Aggy and Gwy had them beaten. Both of them had had algorithms included in their programming to allow them to emulate more or less Human reactions to stimuli in a virtual environment, but while they had some sort of sex life, that was not how they conducted it. Both of them occasionally indulged with crew members, but not with each other. Instead they shared… something else. Cassandra had been trying to analyse and record the nature of their relationship for years, and she had been getting nowhere.

It was still disconcerting to have your ship humming contentedly to herself as they flew in towards the planet. Gwy sounded for all the world like a woman who had just had the most glorious sex ever.

Now, however, everything was back to business.

‘I have located Dolan Undal,’ Gwy said into Aneka’s head. ‘He is in his usual place.’

The usual place was a bar called the Happy Chance Saloon for which the term ‘dive’ had been invented. Dimly lit, it had a lot of booths at the back and generally bored-looking staff who were functionally deaf as far as conversations at tables were concerned. It was exactly the sort of place you might expect to find Oberian’s only professional spy and information broker.

Undal fit the suave espionage agent stereotype. In the warmth of the bar he dressed in a crisp, black, silky shirt and black slacks. His black hair was cut to the latest, short style. He was handsome, and his blue eyes held a lot of intelligence and a substantial quality of shrewdness, and he watched Aneka approaching with the air of someone who could see opportunity walking his way.

‘Miss Jansen, what brings you back to Treamon?’

Aneka settled into the booth beside him, dropping her long, padded coat on the seat beside her. He did not object to the apparent familiarity, recognising it as a move which allowed her to watch the door. ‘I’m looking for someone.’

‘What has some poor fool done to incur your displeasure this time?’

‘Huh. She cheated on me, but that’s not why I’m looking for her. She was kidnapped from Lacora. It’s–’

‘I know of Lacora. No one from here goes there. They say it’s cursed, if you believe in that sort of thing. It’s certainly not a safe world. Every attempt to colonise it has ended in death.’

‘There’s some sort of bioweapon in the water.’

‘That would certainly explain it. More recently, however, I heard that the Pinnacle were taking an interest in it.’

Aneka frowned. If the Pinnacle had grabbed Ella… ‘I’d heard they were expanding, but I didn’t think they’d come out so far.’ She had heard rumours on a number of worlds, even this one, but nothing substantive.

‘They established a base, a “border enforcement station,” not too far from Lacora last year. It’s the closest they’ve come to a military presence near here.’

‘I don’t suppose you could get me coordinates for that station?’

‘I am afraid that I don’t have them. We know it’s there, somewhere, but the exact location is an unknown.’

‘I could really do with finding out where it is, Dolan.’

The spy smiled. ‘And I know just the people for you to ask.’

Aneka’s eyes narrowed. ‘What’s this going to cost me?’

‘Oh… Let us just say that if you ask sufficiently harshly that you get the answer, it will be of mutual benefit.’

~~~

‘The building is heavily shielded against electromagnetic interference and screened against eavesdropping,’ Al stated. ‘It appears that we will be required to infiltrate it to get what we want.’

Aneka sighed, but she had been expecting it. The building housed the Pinnacle’s presence on Oberian, or the primary part of it. From there they did their best to monitor communications traffic across the planet and given that their technology was a generation and a bit above the native systems, they did a pretty good job. Undal was, of course, less than pleased with that, but there was little he could do about it. The fractured political structure of the planet meant that at least some of the governments there were quite in favour of Pinnacle involvement in the world’s affairs. The more sensible ones, and Undal, knew that once the neighbours got a foot in the door they would ram in the boot, possibly with a nuclear toecap. Of course, if some outsider took exception to them…

Aneka slipped down an alleyway and took off her coat, dumping it against a wall. ‘Okay, we go in, get the data out of their computers, and then we pay for it.’ She engaged her shield and the cloaking system which came with it and then marched around to the front entrance of the building, invisible to all but the most advanced sensor systems.

The building was three storeys, built of Plascrete and appeared to belong to an import/export company. The receptionist, an attractive woman dressed in a thin, pale blue blouse, frowned as the inner doors of the entrance vestibule opened and no one walked in. Her shoulders dipped and she stared at the doorway for several seconds until the doors closed again. No one had entered and the cameras in the little airlock were showing no one inside it.

Aneka walked around the desk and glanced back. Sure enough, the woman’s hands were resting on a large electromagnetic shotgun hidden behind the desk. Treamon was a relatively safe part of the planet; the policing was efficient and congenial, but effective. The high-calibre gun seemed a little excessive.

‘We appear to be in the right place,’ Al commented.

‘Now we just need to locate their main hub.’

‘Somewhere secure. There is no roof access, so I would suggest the top floor.’

There was a staircase and it let Aneka move, unseen, all the way to the top. There were more people there, and they all seemed to be moving with a purpose. Oberians were a generally fairly laidback people. They worked hard and they sometimes played hard, but they were usually pretty relaxed. The people in this office had an intensity about them which was distinctly un-Oberian. Aneka moved slowly among them, giving them as wide a berth as possible. Her cloak was good enough that she could stand right in front of their faces if she had to, but tempting fate unnecessarily was just asking for someone to be a little more observant than the rest and no camouflage system was perfect.

‘I’m detecting more electrical activity to our left,’ Al informed her. ‘Either the communications suite or the computer core.’

The unmarked door stood out like a sore thumb. Presumably the fact that every other door had someone’s name on it was meant to suggest that this was a cupboard, but if it was, the offices on either side were very large. Checking that no one was looking, Aneka tried the door. It was locked.

‘Try again,’ Al said with barely a pause. The door opened and Aneka slipped inside. ‘People should learn to use physical locks.’

‘You’ve locked it again?’

‘I have.’

Dropping her shield, Aneka pulled a length of optical data cable from a belt pouch, located a switch with a free port and jacked in via the port in her neck. ‘Get everything you can out of it and then trash their security system.’ Another pouch produced a device the size of a drinks tin which she placed behind one of the racks of equipment before activating it. Then she looked around. ‘I think it’s the communications suite and the computer core. They must be tapped into half the physical circuits in the city as well as monitoring radio traffic.’

‘They are. The data here is extensive. Do you want me to grab their collected information or just stick to Pinnacle-related data?’

‘Everything you can get, but prioritise the latter. Dolan would probably like to know what they’ve got on his world.’

‘A lot. The station we are looking for is now the primary communications relay for this site. I have its location. We can be there in just over seventy hours.’

‘Get everything you can on it. If we’re breaking Ella out, I want to know as much about the place as possible.’

‘Already done. I have a subprocess working through the data.’

‘Good.’ Her head turned as someone tried the door. When it failed to open, they tried harder. ‘How’s that download coming?’

‘Five more seconds.’

Aneka nodded and slipped her pistol free of its holster. ‘I think we have that.’

‘Whoever is in there, give yourself up and you will not be harmed.’ The voice sounded firm, authoritative, and quite genuine. Infrared suggested there were around six people outside the door, all of them armed.

‘The door must have additional monitoring on it,’ Al said.

‘Not an issue. In fact, it’s kind of a plus given what comes next.’

‘True. Download complete.’

Aneka pulled the cable out of her neck, raised her pistol and fired through the door. Hyperdense needles hit light metal, flashed into bursts of bright plasma and burned through, searing into bodies on the other side. It was likely insufficient to kill them, but the shock would be disorienting. She yanked open the door and stepped out.

Three men fell as her pistol turned right and fired. Her eyes were on the men on the left, surprised by the sudden attack but recovering quickly. Their guns were coming up. Aneka turned, spraying needles across their bodies, and then she was moving down the corridor past them before they had fully fallen to the corridor floor.

For several minutes there was nothing but shouting and the sharp cracks from Aneka’s weapon as it threw death at incredible velocity. This had been Undal’s price for ‘introducing’ Aneka to the Pinnacle spy enclave: making sure there were no Pinnacle spies around when she left. She had pointed out that she might not get them all, and he had pointed out that not all of them were in the building. Making a severe dent in their population would do enough damage that he could regain control of the situation. But there was no point in not being thorough and she went from room to room, shooting anyone who even looked threatening, which was pretty much everyone she saw.

The numbers were thinning on the middle floor, and by the time she got to ground level, she found only a couple of men with force rifles who still appeared determined to take her down. They had no chance. The receptionist was gone and the vestibule doors were wide open, letting freezing air flood the reception area.

Aneka cut her cloak in as she headed for the street. ‘Blow it.’

There was a short pause and then the building seemed to scream in outrage as the implosion grenade she had left in the computer room detonated, tearing the heart out of the structure. Masonry collapsed behind her as the horribly destructive device did its work, and Aneka kept walking, putting distance between herself and the carnage she had wrought.

Gwy, 9.11.559 FSC.

‘I have completed the analysis of the data we collected,’ Al said. It was his avatar speaking, and he was doing so in analogue rather than digital, mostly because this was a presentation and he felt it lent something to the process. ‘With Gwy’s assistance, obviously,’ he added.

The obsidian figure of Gwy’s avatar nodded to him. ‘I have made copies of the appropriate data and sent them to Mister Undal. He sent a message thanking you for the thought.’

Aneka nodded. ‘I’m sure he’ll put it to good use. What do you have?’

Al turned to the wall screen and a local area star map appeared showing the Oberian system, Border Enforcement Station 395, and their current location between the two. A fourth point marked Lacora. ‘The Pinnacle put up these stations in star systems which are basically useless but which they consider to be of strategic importance. We have been unable to determine what “strategic” means, but it seems to be their equivalent of marking territory.’

‘What’s that? Twenty parsecs from Lacora?’

‘A little over.’

‘Damn. If we’d known they were that close, we’d have pulled the mission or sent them with a lot more security.’

‘Quite.’ The display changed to a schematic format showing a moderately typical-looking space station based on a converted asteroid. ‘They build them all to the same basic design. An armoured core area, outer regions protected by the scavenged rock, and a substantial amount of weaponry. They typically have at least one light cruiser stationed there at all times.’

‘So, if Ella’s there, she’s going to be in the core section? I assume they put habitation in there?’

‘According to the standard layout. Security is tight, but substantially below our technological level. We have two generations on them. Gwy’s screens will have no difficulty in keeping us hidden. However, active scans would give us away.’

‘You’ll need to go in and find out where she is,’ Gwy said. ‘Sorry.’

‘Not your fault, blame physics.’ Aneka closed her eyes. The Pinnacle had had Ella for almost twenty days and they were not exactly known for their kindness to ‘aliens.’ On the other hand, she had been taken, which meant they had had a reason to keep her alive… Ella was going to be alive when Aneka found her. It was as simple as that. ‘Right. Now, about you two…’ Aneka opened her eyes and looked first at Al’s avatar and then at Cassandra. ‘What are you doing?’

Cassandra managed to look a little sheepish. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You haven’t seen each other in months. I know your relationship is as much mental as physical, but you haven’t even been standing close together much of the time. Frankly it’s starting to piss me off.’

‘We were being sensitive.’

‘And I did point out that it would not work,’ Al said.

Aneka shook her head. ‘We’re all adults. Some of us are a thousand years old. Just because Ella’s done something stupid with a man who is not fit to wipe mud off my boots does not mean my self-esteem is sufficiently damaged that I need to be babied. You two better start acting like a couple again or I’ll shout at you. Loudly. Using heavy sarcasm. Understood?’

‘I do not believe that further clarification is required,’ Al told her.

‘We’ll be good,’ Cassandra added meekly.

‘Good,’ Aneka said, leaning back in her chair, ‘because I haven’t had any in ages either, so when you two have finished reconnecting, it’s my turn.’

12.11.559 FSC.

The fortified rock that was Border Enforcement Station 395 filled the view from Gwy’s flight deck. As space stations went, it was not especially large and it was rather unassuming, considering that it was meant to mark Pinnacle’s claim to the system. It was fairly well armed, with good sensors, and there was a cruiser attached to it via a docking pylon, but the effect was rather unimpressive.

‘I believe your view is coloured by the stations back at Shadataga,’ Al commented.

‘Maybe,’ Aneka replied. ‘Gwy, are we getting anything which might be Ella’s implant?’

‘No, Aneka,’ the ship replied. ‘However, the station is noisy and the wireless system implanted in Ella is designed for short range.’

‘Yeah… Okay, we observe for a while. See what you can do about tapping their comms. Do full passive scans of the station, and compare it with the generalised schematic. If I’m going in, I’d like to know as much about the place as possible.’

‘I have already begun,’ Gwy replied.

‘Of course you have. I expected nothing less.’

~~~

Aneka moved across the surface of the asteroid carefully, keeping low against the rock. It was mostly to ensure she did not float away from it since it was spinning and the only things keeping her attached were the gripper strips on her nanosuit. She was using the suit because it had optical camouflage, radar stealth, and thermal suppression, and she could only keep her personal cloak up for so long. The fact that it could bounce bullets and beams as well as her shield was incidental; she did not really expect to need that.

‘All right,’ she said, ‘everything’s in place. Blow it.’

Of course, the explosions made no sound, but she felt the slight vibration in the rock as the docking pylon holding the cruiser in place sheared off along a joint and the big warship began to spiral slowly off into space.

‘I am detecting alarm codes being broadcast through the station,’ Gwy reported.

Aneka nodded, even if the AI could not see it. ‘Good. Al?’

‘Connection to the internal network made. I have successfully bypassed security. The airlock will open… now.’

‘If only everything was so easy.’ Aneka slipped in through the opening door and waited for the lock to recycle. The plan was simple enough. The alarms would pull most of the personnel to the other end of the station. Aneka would slip in, locate the cells, rescue Ella and get her aboard Gwy where she could berate her at length on the way back to Shadataga. The makeup sex would be lengthy and very energetic. ‘Okay, do we have a location for Ella?’

‘There are no currently occupied cells according to the environmental systems,’ Al replied. ‘We need to locate a secure terminal so that I can access their more restricted systems.’

Aneka’s heart sank. ‘There are weapon turrets in this section, right? We could probably jack in from there.’

‘A good plan. Go right. You should see an access ladder to the nearest turret in about twenty metres.’

‘The cruiser has stabilised its spin,’ Gwy reported. ‘I am monitoring traffic regarding the issue. You were correct. Their initial assumption is mechanical failure. They are, however, actively scanning the near area, almost as though they are expecting a cloaked ship.’

‘Cloaking tech isn’t common in this region,’ Aneka said, not frowning because it was quite hard in the suit.

‘No, but they are performing slow, high-definition scans in a wide frequency range.’

‘You’re secure?’

‘They have not detected me yet.’

The turret was a tight squeeze for a big man and not too easy for Aneka, but it had a control panel with a data port. Aneka settled into the gunner’s seat, produced a length of optical cable and plugged it in. Then she told her suit to open up and the metallic material unwrapped from around her head and neck so that she could plug in.

‘Searching,’ Al stated almost immediately.

Aneka tried to wait patiently. It was not an easy task when your brain ran at the speed of a high-powered quantum computer, but she did her best. The scanning was concerning her. Why were they scanning for a cloaked ship? There were few cultures in this region of the galaxy with the technology to build one, as far as she knew none of those had done so, and if they had, they were unlikely to attack the Pinnacle.

‘Al, could you spare a few cycles to check internal comms? See if you can find out what they’re looking for.’

‘A pirate vessel,’ Al responded without pause. ‘A ship called the Hope of Sanctuary. The commanding officer has stated several times that someone called “Kade” might be responsible. They have failed to locate Gwy, however, and are standing down from high alert.’

‘They’re still scanning,’ Gwy said. ‘I assume that since nothing else has happened they are just being thorough.’

‘And I have found the data on Ella,’ Al said. ‘It is not good news. She was taken off the station to be delivered to a planet named Ariadne approximately eight days ago.’

‘Crap,’ Aneka growled. ‘Can we get location data?’

‘Already done. Aneka, they convicted her on trumped-up terrorism charges. The sentence was passed down from quite far up their hierarchy. And that is where things get odd. She is to be enslaved on arrival at Ariadne, but the commanding officer was told to tell her she was being taken for execution.’

‘Okay, well at least she’s alive. But why the subterfuge? Isn’t slavery bad enough?’

‘There is no explanation aside from a comment that she is to be treated under “protocol fourteen.”’

‘And I assume you can’t find that protocol explained anywhere?’

‘There is nothing with that description in the data we took on Oberian,’ Gwy put in.

‘I suspect that it forms part of an eyes-only instruction given to station commanders,’ Al said.

Aneka sagged slightly. ‘How important do we think that is?’

‘I am unable to pass an opinion without further information. If we don’t know, we could be left in a difficult situation on Ariadne.’

‘And that’s going to be hard enough as it is. This is going to get messy.’

Cassandra’s voice cut in at that point. ‘Do you need me over there with Al’s drone?’

‘No… but get ready. You’re going to become pretty visible soon and Gwy will need some help.’

‘What do you need?’

‘I need a route to the reactor and communications room on this station, and you need to get ready to take out that cruiser.’

~~~

‘Hey, arsehole, wake up.’

Detrow groaned and turned over on his bed. His suite was fairly palatial considering that it was aboard a Pinnacle space station. He did not have to share the rooms with anyone else either. Not all of the crew were so fortunate. As his vision swam into focus, he realised that he was sharing it with someone now. Someone holding a very large handgun.

‘That’s right,’ Aneka said, ‘open those eyes and pay attention. I need some information, and you’re going to give it to me. I’m on a bit of a schedule here, so I’d appreciate it if you listened carefully and answered quickly.’

‘You’ll never get out of here alive,’ Detrow growled, reaching for the comms unit beside his bed… and stopping when he realised it had been ripped out.

‘I beg to differ. What’s protocol fourteen?’ His eyes flicked to her pistol. ‘Oh, sorry, you haven’t been introduced. This is Racine. She’s so far ahead of any technology you have it would make your mouth water, I have no doubt. I came up with the concept, but it took a genius and two of the greatest artificial minds in the galaxy to make it work. She’s a multi-role, automatic, replicator-fed gravitic pistol. Capable of firing a three-mil round at a respectable percentage of the speed of light. She’s very accurate, so if I pull the trigger right now, you’ll lose both your legs below the knee. Now, what’s protocol fourteen?’

‘You’re looking for the Narrows woman. She was sent to be executed.’

‘I’ve seen the orders. What’s protocol fourteen?’

‘You can’t have–’

There was a sharp crack and the bed tore open along its entire width. Detrow felt the heat searing into his buttocks and scrabbled off the bed as it began to smoke. Aneka was on her feet beside him before he even realised she was moving, her hand locked around his throat and Racine pointing at his face.

‘Last time. Keep in mind that this information is useful, but not of sufficient importance that I won’t blow your head off and leave to find it elsewhere. What’s protocol fourteen?’

‘Prisoner of special interest,’ Detrow said quickly. ‘Someone in the hierarchy is keeping an eye on her. It’s usually an intelligence operation.’

Aneka’s head rolled back on her neck and she looked up at the ceiling. ‘I killed six people setting this up so you could tell me that she’s a political prisoner? Well that’s just great.’

‘You’ll still never get out of here alive.’

‘Seriously, don’t bet on that.’ Silently she added, ‘Al, blow it. Gwy, hit the cruiser as soon as the bombs go off and then come get me.’ She looked at Detrow, waiting for the alarms to start.

‘What have you done?’ he asked as claxons began sounding.

‘You can find out when you wake up.’ Then she slammed her gun into the side of his head.

13.11.559 FSC.

‘As requested, both the reactor and communications system of the cruiser have been disabled,’ Gwy said as Aneka marched through from the airlock, heading for the main cabin. ‘Cassandra has already initiated warp, and we are on our way to Ariadne.’

‘Great. Ask her to join us in the cabin when she’s happy with the course.’

Cassandra was not exactly happy, but the course was laid in and Gwy was well able to handle the flight from there. ‘So we went to all that trouble, and tipped our hand to the Pinnacle, to discover nothing especially useful?’ the android asked as she walked in.

Al’s avatar stirred as he took control of it. ‘Essentially that is true. The loss of their communications system will significantly delay any warning they may give to their compatriots, however.’

‘Well,’ Aneka said, ‘we confirmed what we suspected, that Ella’s capture had a reason beyond simple information gathering. Any thoughts on the subterfuge regarding her sentence?’

‘They want her scared,’ Cassandra replied. ‘She’ll spend the flight thinking she’s going to die when she gets to the destination. Can we get to Ariadne before she does?’

‘I have no information on the ship which took her,’ Al said. ‘A cruiser we could beat, but if they sent some sort of courier vessel, they have a sufficient head start to make it unlikely.’

‘If they sent a courier to pick her up,’ Aneka mused, ‘it would imply that they’ve had this entire thing planned out for a while. There’s some plot behind all this and I don’t like it. Gwy? We’re at full warp?’

‘Of course, Aneka.’

‘Okay, we make best speed to Ariadne and see what we can discover there.’

Part Four: Ariadne and the Pirate Queen

Ariadne, 12.11.559 FSC.

‘I am pleased to tell you that, by the mercy of Pinnacle Commander Lucifent himself, your sentence has been commuted to life in slavery.’ The officer explaining this to Ella was smiling at her. She suspected that he expected her to be happy about it so she presented him with a relieved smile.

‘Thank you,’ she said. Apparently he had been expecting more because he looked a little confused for a second. ‘Thank you so much,’ she added.

‘Yes… You have been assigned to the family of one of our commanders. You will be taken there immediately. This is your first and last warning. Any attempt to escape or act to the detriment of your owners will result in your immediate execution.’

‘Of course.’

The man frowned at her. ‘Take her away,’ he said to the guards standing on either side of her.

Ella went, meek as could be, with the guards. In truth, she had expected the reprieve and it came as no surprise. They had woken her up four days earlier and treated her like a condemned prisoner the entire time. The ship she was on seemed small, a fast courier vessel in all probability, and that had been one extra fact to go with the others which had begun to circulate once the initial panic had worn off. The vessel had to have been sent out ahead of time to collect her. But why was she being shipped to a planet to be executed anyway? The gunner who had displeased his captain had been killed without pause, so why would they wait to kill her?

So it was a shock tactic. In fact, the entire proceeding seemed to have been set up that way. Slavery had been put out there as a possibility. Then it had been yanked away from her and she had been left to worry over that for days before the ‘lesser’ sentence was invoked due to the ‘mercy’ of their ultimate leader. She was meant to feel grateful. She was supposed to feel happy about being enslaved since she had thought she was going to die.

Ariadne was a perfect world to be on while dressed in a lightweight shift of a dress. The atmosphere was humid and warm, tropical warm. The spaceport building had been air-conditioned, but the heat hit Ella as soon as she stepped out through the doors. The guards seemed to be unconcerned, likely used to it. On the other hand, the ground car she was bundled into was similarly air-conditioned so they clearly found the warm, damp air less than pleasing. At least the drive gave her a view of the planet.

Someone, it seemed, was up on their classical mythology. As they moved out of the built-up area around the port, the surrounding area turned to scrubby bushes which showed signs of having been denser forest cut down relatively recently. Stretching across the bushes were filaments, strands of silvery material which looked like webbing. If the odd growth, which was presumably some sort of plant, was endemic, then it had likely given the world its name.

‘See that silver stuff?’ one of her guards said from the front seat. Having him speak was something of a surprise.

‘Yes. Fascinating.’

‘Dangerous. We burn it back from the towns. If you see any, report it. Get too close and it gives out an electric pulse. It’s been known to stop a man’s heart.’

‘Thank you. I’ll be careful.’

‘That’s the standard warning. Everyone sent here gets it, even the slaves.’

‘Thank you anyway.’

He did not reply and they travelled the rest of the way in silence. Ella estimated ten kilometres out from the port complex and then through a gate into a walled community which looked like it was relatively recently built and quite pleasant. She noted, however, that the ground around the wall showed signs of burning and there were small turrets mounted on it, presumably there to keep the web back.

The house they stopped outside was low, a single storey, but still quite large. The area around it was solid, poured concrete from the look of it. Somehow she had expected gardens. The place looked like it should have gardens.

She was taken through the front door and then left and down a corridor into an office. It looked utilitarian rather than part of a home and it contained a man. He was tall and powerfully built, which seemed to be typical of Pinnacle men. The haircut could be generously described as fashionable, it fitted his face nicely, and he was aging well but he was aging. Used to people not doing that unless they wanted to, Ella found it fascinating that a society would embrace the process.

‘Ella Narrows,’ the man said, not getting up from his desk.

‘That’s me,’ Ella replied. The man smiled and pain lanced through her skull.

‘You’ll speak when answering a question,’ he said when the pain had stopped. ‘I am Commander Arundal and I am now your owner. Take the collar off her.’

One of the guards produced a control box and tapped some sort of code into it. The collar disentangled itself from around Ella’s throat and she thought about thanking them, but she doubted it would be a permanent arrangement and Arundal had told her not to speak. Sure enough, her new owner produced a second collar from his desk and handed it to a guard. It looked more or less the same as the first one, but with different coloured gems mounted in it. Arundal produced a box which he used to lock the collar in place.

‘She’s mine now, men, you may go.’ The two guards turned and left without a word, leaving Ella alone with Arundal. He looked at her briefly as though examining a newly bought car. ‘As I said, you now belong to me. You will be one of my house slaves so my wife will be dealing with you most of the time. If I need to speak to you, it will hurt. Are we clear?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Ella replied.

‘Excellent, you’re a fast learner. Behave, don’t give me cause for concern, and you’ll find this a pleasant assignment. I know why you’re here, so have no doubt I will execute you myself if I even think you’re going to be a problem.’

Ella nodded. She had not actually been asked anything so staying silent seemed like a good idea. Meanwhile, she set her implant working on the radio signals she had recorded from the collar controls. They were encrypted and the protocol would take some time to work out, but she was fairly sure that she would have access to the unlock code within a day or two. Now all she needed was a plan to get off the planet.

13.11.559 FSC.

The day started early in the Arundal household. There was little light in the sky when the slaves were roused from their beds by the house computer and set about their tasks. The family got up about thirty minutes later, expecting the breakfast to be laid out. Commander Arundal was ten minutes later than his wife, son, and daughter since he was being dressed by his personal servant, a rather dour, older man who, despite wearing the same collar as all the other slaves, still seemed to consider himself somehow better than them.

Ella was on breakfast duty and she made sure everything was ready and waiting when the first of the family arrived. Mrs Arundal peered at the table briefly and then gave her a nod indicating that everything was to her satisfaction. Ella said nothing but allowed a pleased smile to show. She wanted them thinking she was happy to serve after all.

Mrs Arundal was quite the beauty. Very slim, not at all tall, very feminine, and Ella got the impression that this was a basic Pinnacle feature just as the men were big and strong. Priding itself on being ‘genetically pure,’ the Pinnacle had still engineered in a few variations and the differentiation in sexual roles appeared to be primary in that engineering.

Certainly the daughter, Nadine, was only eight, but taking after her mother. Small, slim, with a cute sort of face and blonde hair. Her mother wore hers long, while Nadine had a short bob. The son, Adam, was taking after his father and was developing just as one might expect. He was sixteen, firmly muscled, fit, and he was an arrogant little prick. Ella had only known him for a few hours and already she wanted to deck him.

There was random chatter over breakfast while Ella stood by to serve coffee or juice as needed. The head of the house would be off to his office at the naval base once it was done, while his son would be going to the academy beside it. Nadine was told to make sure she did well with her school work, while it seemed to be assumed that Adam would. Ella was not entirely sure whether that was a reflection of the nature of the children or some implicit misogyny.

Any efforts to discover which might be the case were forestalled by a shopping trip. Nadine was left to study under the supervision of the education system while Mrs Arundal took Ella out to the nearby shopping district. Ella was entirely unsure why she was needed, until she realised that she was not; the entire point of having your slave along was to demonstrate that you had one, and the Arundals had a new one who had to be shown off.

‘A new slave, Maureen?’ The speaker was a pretty blonde who looked older than Mrs Arundal, perhaps the wife of a senior officer.

‘Hmm? Oh, yes.’ Of course, pretending that you did not really care that anyone noticed the new girl was all part of the ritual. ‘A work in progress, obviously.’

‘They all need a little training when you first get them. Don’t be afraid of using the collar.’

‘I’ve trained a few now. I’m not.’

Ella wondered whether that was for her benefit, but she got the impression that this was the elder wife suggesting that the younger one might not be up to the job, and the expected rebuttal.

‘She doesn’t look strong. Will she last?’

‘I’m told she’s stronger than she looks, but you can never tell with these inferior species.’

Ella said nothing, standing nearby with a placid look on her face. It was actually rather fascinating and, had she not been in something of a hurry to get back home to Aneka, she might have considered continuing on for a month or so just to observe. The kind of social one-upmanship she was seeing was just not a particularly big component of Jenlay society. Oh, you had the usual plays for seniority and power among the Jenlay, but this was far more like the society Aneka had described among suburban households back in her original time. Aneka had been unimpressed, but Ella thought it was very interesting. Her owner would likely have been unimpressed to discover that she was taking notes for a paper.

In fact, Mrs Arundal was more observant than Ella had given her credit for. ‘You appear to have questions, Ella.’ It was a statement, but there was an implicit question and Ella decided to risk it.

‘I have, ma’am.’

‘Then ask. You are in training. My job is to ensure that you become a useful slave. To this end, I will grant you leave to ask such questions as will further your education. Only when we are alone and I have granted permission, however.’

‘Of course, ma’am. Thank you. The woman you were speaking to about me, the one so determined to advise you on my training, you don’t like her. Why associate with her?’

‘She is the wife of one of my husband’s senior officers. Not very senior so I don’t have to take her useless advice with a smile now, but senior enough. Rank is status here. I’ll give you a quick lesson on the rank structure later this week. You’re a comely girl and we’re having a dinner party. You’ll be waiting table.’

‘Thank you, ma’am.’ Ella actually meant it; she would actually get to observe the Pinnacle at a social function! It was ages since she had got to do any real anthropological study and this was just perfect, aside from the threat of agonising pain if she screwed up.

15.11.559 FSC.

Two days in and Ella felt she was getting into the swing of Pinnacle society, at least from the bottom of it. She had given no one a reason to use the collar control on her in that time and the decryption software had finally cracked the code during the night. It allowed her to start using the package on the house’s wireless network, which was significantly easier to decrypt given that it was commercial grade and not even especially secure. Data transmitted across it was in the clear, but there were encrypted authentication tags which she would need to work out if she wished to use it.

The dinner party Mrs Arundal had mentioned was to be the following evening and Ella had already decided that, barring emergency, she was not leaving before then. The chance to observe the Pinnacle up close was not likely to be one she would ever get again. If she escaped, she would not be allowed back very easily, and if she failed, she would be dead. Or that seemed likely, though she was beginning to have doubts.

For one thing, Mrs Arundal was too nice. She had explained her behaviour as educating a new slave, but Ella was not entirely buying it. There seemed to be a distinct effort to appear friendly. There was severity and authority, and there was always the big stick that was Commander Arundal who seemed quick with his punishment of anyone performing below his expectations. Maureen Arundal, however, was doing her best to appear firm but fair, severe but compassionate.

‘What were you before you became a biological terrorist?’ Mrs Arundal asked as she watched Ella dusting the lounge, a task which could easily have been left to automated systems.

‘I worked at a university,’ Ella replied, ignoring the insult in the question.

‘Secretary?’

‘Head of social sciences.’

‘Oh really?’ The question came with a scoffing laugh and Ella decided to stay silent. ‘Social sciences?’

‘Anthropology, archaeology, psychology, a few more esoteric subjects.’

‘I studied psychology. Haven’t practised in years, of course.’

Of course. But then that made perfect sense of Ella’s placement in this house. The man of the house was military intelligence and his wife was a psychologist. Yes, that made sense. ‘I don’t get to do much field work these days,’ Ella said. ‘Didn’t. A lot of administration.’ Which was not that much of a lie; she had been doing more and more admin and less real science.

‘Then how did you end up creating a bioweapon?’

Ella considered for a second, and then she said, ‘Would ma’am prefer an answer which is unlikely to result in her activating my collar, or the truth?’

‘An impertinent answer.’

‘My apologies, ma’am. I was convicted of a crime I denied. I would prefer not to be in pain and, given my circumstances, I see no point in making my case to you. You are unlikely to believe me anyway and nothing I say will change my fate. Administrators are required on any complex mission, are they not? Obviously, the production of a complex bioweapon would merit the attention of a senior administrator.’

‘And the truth?’

‘We found the virus. It’s a very advanced form of biological nanomachine. Quite ancient and quite deadly. We found some evidence to suggest that it caused the Xinti to move from their natural bodies to synthetic ones. Variations of it have turned up at various points in history. The most recent of those was about thirty years ago when someone did try to use it as a bioweapon.’

‘And what happened to that person?’

‘A friend of mine killed him and we nuked the viral production facility.’

~~~

‘My wife informs me that you had prior experience of the viral weapon on Lacora?’

Ella stood beside Commander Arundal’s desk while he sat on the far side doing his best impression of a superior, Pinnacle officer. She looked at him for a second, considering her words. ‘I encountered a viral weapon which shared some characteristics with it. My microbiologist indicated that the structures were too similar for it to be coincidence. One was derived from the other and Lacora appeared to be the original source.’

‘So the previous encounter was with a less virulent form?’

‘More and further engineered. It performed restructuring on the victim’s body, turning them into mindless, cannibalistic, disease vectors.’

‘And where did this happen?’

‘A planet called Eshebbon. It’s of no use to you. It’s several hundred parsecs away, well outside your sphere of influence, and the site is still radioactive.’

‘Nowhere is outside our sphere of influence should we wish to involve ourselves. I find it difficult to believe that anyone would throw away a weapon of such utility.’

Ella shrugged. ‘Historically, bioweapons have always been problematic. Deployment is messy, they can backfire, and we really don’t need that kind of weapon. Perhaps we have a different viewpoint on warfare. If we encounter a species who won’t listen to reason, we remove them entirely and directly. Not that we’ve ever been required to enact the threat.’

‘You “remove” them?’

‘Our military strategist is very clear on the matter. Should it ever come to it, and she fervently hopes it never does, an enemy who refuses peace must be eliminated for the greater good, down to the last man. To show mercy to a species without mercy is to invite terrorism, insurgency, and a drawn-out war which threatens everyone else. Every system they inhabit is to be destroyed. They are to be hunted down and eradicated. It’s never happened because… Well, most species aren’t suicidal.’

Arundal waved a dismissive hand. ‘With that kind of power you would be ruling the galaxy by now.’

‘We aren’t interested in ruling the galaxy, Commander. We just want to learn from it.’

~~~

The Pinnacle, it seemed, were not interested in learning anything from the galaxy unless it had a military application. With the household asleep, Ella had connected into the local network and quickly found a map of the region which gave her a working route between the township she was in and the spaceport. However, she could have taken a more direct route were it not for the large regions marked as dangerous thanks to the silver webbing, and she had gone looking for information on the odd material.

It was organic and native to the planet, and it was more or less a monoculture. After it had evolved, more or less nothing else had. Almost everything which had existed prior to that had also been wiped out. Pinnacle scientists had established that it conducted electricity, but not especially well, and that it gave off low levels of radio waves. If touched, it was capable of electrocuting a victim, and large collections of it could emit high-energy static discharges which could disable someone getting too close. It grew quickly, but it was vulnerable to fire. Having established a threat potential, research had stopped. They knew what they needed to know.

Well, now Ella had everything she needed too. Once the party was out of the way and the house quiet, she would leave.

16.11.559 FSC.

There were eight additional people at the table tonight. All the men were in uniform. The women were in floor-length gowns, either strapless or with very thin straps. Ella had decided that this was the current fashion since she had seen the same sort of gown in the shops.

The uniforms were uninformative, but the ages suggested one officer senior to Commander Arundal and the rest probably juniors. They all seemed to be friends, which was somehow not what Ella was expecting. She had really thought that the primary purpose of the party was either social climbing or career advancement, but the atmosphere was too relaxed. The chatter at the table was social. There was a tendency for the men to drift off into work talk, but the two senior wives were there to redirect things.

‘Has anything come of our attempts to solve the Iyonvrie situation?’ one of the junior officers asked.

Arundal favoured him with a smile. ‘Your wife will be rolling her eyes, David, if you keep talking business.’

The young man’s wife grinned. ‘I’m used to it. And everyone is interested in Iyonvrie. One of the main holdouts on the current border?’

Arundal glanced at his superior and Ella saw the slight nod. Iyonvrie was apparently a security matter, but discussion was being allowed. It was being allowed in front of a slave. ‘We are progressing several plans to get around their technology.’

‘Antimatter bombs,’ one of the other, younger, officers said. Ella got the feeling it was speculation. ‘Their screens prevent nuclear weapons detonating, but they won’t stop an antimatter explosion.’

So this Iyonvrie had some form of strong nuclear force enhancement technology. It would render most nuclear weapons useless. Shadataga used similar fields when transporting radioactive materials and in some experiments to slow down the decay of short lifetime isotopes. Using antimatter to initiate a fusion weapon, or using pure antimatter as the explosives would get around the field, however. These people were talking about using weapons of very massive destruction against a world in order to conquer it. And they were doing it in front of a slave.

‘Your military science is up to scratch I see,’ the older officer said. ‘Such devices would do the job, but there are simpler means of bypassing their damper fields.’

‘Kinetic bombardment,’ someone suggested.

‘But that would require construction of larger gunships to be effective.’

‘The dreadnoughts would be sufficient.’

‘Not to be fully effective. We would need extra-long accelerators. The dreadnoughts would be far more effective with antimatter warheads.’

‘Gentlemen,’ Arundal said, ‘let us seek an unorthodox point of view in our deliberations. Ella, you say your people can eliminate their opposition with ease. How would you go about defeating the defences of Iyonvrie?’ Ella raised an eyebrow; it was an unexpected turn of events.

‘You’re asking a slave?’ one of the women asked.

‘Ella was convicted of bioterrorism and, by the mercy of Pinnacle Commander Lucifent himself, placed in slavery rather than being executed. Her culture, it seems, has some very powerful weapons and she does not seem unwilling to discuss them. Ella?’

‘We wouldn’t attack this planet you’re discussing with intent to capture it, sir,’ Ella replied. ‘Our weapons expert has, I believe, run simulations of weaponry with that objective, but they have never been built. I believe her favourite was a hypervelocity projectile. A reactionless drive capable of accelerating a large missile to near-light speed.’

The man favouring the kinetic impactors did not seem especially happy to have had his option confirmed. ‘You’re saying you could build that, but never have?’

‘There’s no point, sir. If a world does not wish to join us, then they simply don’t gain the benefit of our technology.’

‘And if they attack you?’ the senior officer asked. ‘You’re not saying you won’t defend yourself?’

‘No, sir. If they attack us and pose a meaningful threat, the response is something which was trialled once, several hundred parsecs away from here. We blow up their star.’

There was laughter around the room. To Ella, some of it seemed a little strained. ‘No one can blow up a star,’ one of the wives said. Her laughter had been particularly strained.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Ella replied, ‘we can.’

‘This is fine dinner conversation,’ Mrs Arundal said into the silence. ‘Elisabeth, that is a new dress isn’t it?’

Ella stepped back a pace and watched as the conversation progressed. She had to wonder what Arundal was up to, him and the senior anyway. They had allowed that to continue for some reason, and engaging her in it seemed to indicate that it was meant for her. Had they been trying to scare her with their weaponry? Or trying to discover what might be used against them? The latter was hardly a secret and there was no known defence against War’s star killer. She was sure they were up to something, but discovering what it was was not a priority. When the house went dark tonight, she would be leaving and their schemes would mean nothing.

17.11.559 FSC.

Ella looked out across the spaceport landing pad towards a ship, a light transport vessel, which she was currently hoping was going to be her ticket off the planet. She was frowning.

Things were going just a little too well for her tastes. Getting out of the house had been simple and the township gate had been unguarded. Well, it was a civilian community on a planet the Pinnacle viewed as being under their control. There was no need for guards on the gates, but it just somehow felt out of character for the Pinnacle. Her collar was still about her neck, but inactive. She assumed that it could be tracked, but removing it seemed more likely to draw attention than keeping it on; she was still dressed in the manner of a slave.

She had made her way as quickly as she could to the port. She was still barefoot and she could not move on the actual roadways. The ground at the sides of the roads was rough, and she needed to stay away from the silver webbing, but there was room enough to move about unseen. So it had been well into the early hours when she got to the port and tapped into the computer network there looking for a ship she could use.

The transport ship was just out of an engine refit and was marked down for a test flight. No specific schedule had been assigned; it appeared that it would be run in when a suitable pilot was available. Well, as far as Ella was concerned, a suitable pilot had just been found, but she was worried that it all seemed just a little convenient. Still, Aneka had some phrase about horses given as gifts…

The airlock controls were not even locked, although that made a certain, perverse, sense. If you were there then you were allowed to be. No slave would make it to the port to find an unlocked ship, right? So why bother locking the door.

‘Who are you trying to convince, Ella?’ she muttered to herself as she made her way into the silent ship. It was small, and the engines were not powerful. It was going to take her a long time to get home. On the other hand, it did mean that pretty much all the flight systems were wrapped around the cockpit where she could have easy access, and that was going to be important. She spent ten minutes locating the power feeds into the communications array, and then another twenty carefully adjusting the audio filters to distort her voice and make it sound like the comms system was flaky. Satisfied, and with the sun starting to come up, she sat down in the control chair and began powering the engines.

‘Light transport vessel nine-six-seven-four to Ariadne control. Requesting clearance for lift-off for engine tests.’ She waited, hoping she was not going to have to try to make a run for it, because if that was the case, she was probably fucked.

‘LT-nine-six-seven-four, please hold for verification.’ Ella closed her eyes, but there seemed to be very little pause before she heard, ‘LT-nine-six-seven-four, you are cleared for lunar transition and return. Please note that your comms are coming through with some distortion.’

‘Noted, control. I’ll put it on the list for them to look at when I get back.’

There was no reply and Ella cut in the antigravity system and pushed off the ground on thrusters. She would do everything by the book, at least the book back home, until she got out to the local moon. Push the ship up into low orbit, do one circuit and then fire the engines for lunar transition. She was supposed to be testing the engines, so pushing the flight out a little would not be unusual. Yes, this was going to work.

Almost entirely out of interest, she actually did run the engine performance metrics as she powered the ship out of orbit. The sublight drive was a fusion torch variant and seemed efficient enough, if a little low in power for her current preferences. There seemed to be nothing wrong with the refit. Pinnacle engineers appeared to be proficient, though she had expected nothing less, even from people working on a fairly basic transport ship. A diagnostic sequence on the warp drive indicated that it was fully operational and Ella figured the time getting out to the moon would be best served by looking through navigation data for a destination planet.

As the ship injected into lunar orbit to swing around for the return journey, Ella clambered under the main console, located the comms system power feeds and yanked them out. She was about to get back up and fire the engines when the vessel gave a violent shudder and alarms began going off. The torch drive was offline and badly damaged from the readouts she was seeing. Something going wrong with the refit seemed unlikely given that the thing was not even running, but there was no indication of anything on sensors which might have attacked.

Warping in such close proximity to the moon was not exactly recommended, but she figured that it was the best option she had, and she was getting the engines ready when she heard a deep clang resonate through the hull. It sounded a lot like something had just attached itself to her ship. Internal sensors told her the airlock had been opened and she considered hiding somewhere, but there was not exactly much space to do that and she would almost certainly be found anyway.

Ella got to her feet and stepped around the flight chair. If someone came through the door, she might be able to overpower them. It just did not seem like a likely outcome.

And then someone did walk in, and the whole situation got that much stranger.

Hope of Sanctuary.

Captain Anastasia Kade was a very tall, long-haired platinum blonde with very long legs and an expansive chest. She was totally different from Aneka and also quite similar, which was not what had shocked Ella. She was, apparently, the leader of a bunch of pirates who had seen an easy target and gone for it. That was not that shocking either, though she was wondering what they were doing in the middle of a Pinnacle system.

No, the weird thing was all the anachronism. Kade’s crew were a mismatched bunch dressed in all manner of random garments and carrying weapons which belonged in previous times. They were all Human or of a Human subspecies, but that was about all you could say about them. That, and that they were pirates, for want of a better term. Clearly audacious pirates, but pirates all the same. Kade was dressed in a shirt-and-corset affair which exposed a lot of cleavage. She was in extremely tight, hip-hugging trousers and ankle-length, high-heeled boots. She carried a sword and a large handgun which looked like it fired actual explosively driven projectiles! Everything was just wrong, but strangely stereotypical.

‘Welcome to the Hope of Sanctuary, Miss Narrows,’ Kade said as she escorted Ella in through the airlock. ‘She’s an ex-Pinnacle vessel, but we’ve made a few modifications and now she’s used to fight them.’

The structure was definitely Pinnacle in design, but someone had painted elaborate murals along the corridor walls. Ella was not an art expert either, but it looked to her as though whoever was responsible had talent, and the style was the same throughout so it was probably one person.

As they rounded a corner, a woman appeared through a door and fell into step with them. She was not especially tall, and she was blue. Her skin was blue, her tail was blue, and her hair was a slightly darker blue. And she was naked aside from an array of belts which held knives and cartridges for the shotgun she had strapped across her back. Her nose was flattened but Human in shape, and she had yellow, almost golden, irises. Ella guessed that she was a Felix: a transgenic subspecies of Human with cat DNA mixed in.

‘Groff’s not going to make it,’ the cat-girl stated.

‘Shit,’ Kade growled. ‘See to it his wife gets his share from this trip.’

‘Of course. Who’s the redhead?’

‘Trin, this is Ella Narrows. Ella, this is my first mate, Trin. Ask Cubby if he’d join us in my cabin, Trin. Ella has a story she’s going to tell me and then we’ll see what we’re going to do with her.’

‘Sure. Lanyon says the ship’s a bust. Nothing useful.’

‘Except, possibly, for Miss Narrows here. Get us moving. I want us out of the system before they notice their dead transport.’

‘I’m on it.’ Trin turned right down a corridor and Ella was left following Kade forward, presumably to the captain’s cabin.

The captain’s cabin was not really what Ella was expecting, but she decided that she should have expected it, given the captain. There were at least two rooms since there was an inner door, and the one they entered seemed to be a lounge, but there were no chairs, just cushions laid down in piles, all of them covered in brocade, or embroidered, or just in bright shades of purple and red.

Kade placed her sword on a rack which seemed designed for it and then went to what looked like a real wood cabinet which had been fixed to one of the walls.

‘Drink?’ the pirate asked brightly, taking a bottle and two glasses out. The bottle was about half full of a dark liquid.

‘Uh… Actually, that would be great. I’ve had an eventful few weeks.’

Kade handed her a glass and poured a healthy measure of the fluid into it. Her own glass got a little more. ‘Captured by the Pinnacle and a long way from home, I have no doubt. It sounds eventful.’

‘Yeah…’ Ella took a drink. Her eyes widened and the only thing stopping her from choking was that she had got used to the malt whiskey from Old Earth which Aneka liked. ‘What the Hell is this?!’

Kade laughed again and gave her a slap on the shoulder. ‘Rum. We make it ourselves, but it’s an old recipe. You took it better than most do when they’ve never had it before. It’s kind of a tradition on pirate ships.’

‘It’s not bad. So… You’re really a pirate?’

Shrugging, the tall blonde walked across to a pile of cushions and sprawled into it with lazy ease, and without spilling a drop of rum. She stretched out, crossing her ankles and resting her head on one arm. ‘Pirate, freedom fighter, thorn in the Pinnacle’s side… Take your pick.’

‘You don’t like them much I take it?’ Ella sat down on her own pile, more upright than the captain.

‘You really aren’t from around here. I’m an Amazon. We’re a parthenogenic, all-female subspecies created by… Well, never mind, she was a bit of a loon, but she made us to be strong, independent, and basically pacifist. Attack us and we’d fight back, but she wanted a community of women who lived in harmony and didn’t need men.’

‘But… parthenogenesis? You’d all be clones of your mothers.’

‘Minor genetic mods to the gametes and you get variations. It was never a problem. It worked, and we had a great society. There were problems. No such thing as a perfect society, of course, so there were bound to be problems. And then the Pinnacle turned up. It was about forty years ago, they had started expanding in a pretty measured manner and no one had really noticed. They arrived, declared Arcadia to be part of the Pinnacle and the Amazons to be horrific aberrations of nature… It was a slaughter. They had superior weapons and numbers. They enslaved about ten per cent of the population and killed the rest. My mother got me out on a ship which was running the blockade. Never saw her again. I’m probably one of the last few hundred Amazon’s alive in the galaxy. So, yes, I hate the Pinnacle. What’s your story?’ Kade sank half her glass without showing any signs of it impinging on her senses.

Ella was about to answer the question when the door opened. The man who walked in was short and a little on the plump side, balding and with a flattened nose and a wide mouth. His eyes could have been more or less any colour because they were obscured by a pair of goggles with ridiculously thick lenses in them. He was carrying a valise which looked to have been made from recycled carpet.

‘Ah, Cubby,’ Kade said. ‘Thanks for coming down. Get that collar off her, would you?’

Cubby peered at Ella for a second through his thick glasses and then leered. ‘My pleasure, Captain.’ He walked over and knelt down beside Ella, opening his bag and extracting various tools. ‘Don’t mind me,’ he said, grinning.

‘Keep still,’ Kade suggested. ‘If he gets this wrong… Well, you’ll die in agony, but he’s very good. Kind of a genius is our Cubby.’

‘Have to be to keep this crate flying,’ Cubby commented.

‘You can talk, just keep still.’

‘Uh… Sorry, I totally forgot.’ Reaching up to her neck, she caught the collar as her implant sent the unlock code. ‘I figured out how to control the collar. Otherwise they’d have been able to track me as soon as they noticed I was gone.’ Cubby was looking a little disappointed. ‘Sorry.’

‘You worked out how to control the collar?’ the little man said. ‘With what?’

‘Implanted radio and computer.’

Kade frowned. ‘Perhaps you should start with who, and what, you are?’

‘Well, I’m a scientist. Archaeology, psychology, anthropology, palaeoanthropology, history…’

‘You know all that stuff? How old are you? Thirty? Sixty, maybe?’

‘A hundred and eight last birthday. I’m a Jenlay. I guess that’s another Human subspecies. We’re very long-lived.’

‘Damn, girl, I thought I was doing good and I’m not seventy yet.’

Ella smiled. ‘You are doing pretty well as far as I can see. Anyway, we’d found a planet in Old Earth records–’

‘Wait… Old Earth? You’ve been to Earth?’

‘Yes. We stopped off there on the way to Lacora to update them on the plans for the survey. I dropped in on a friend. She’s the Ambassador to the Collective–’

‘The Collective?’

‘It’s what we call the collection of states who work with the Shadataga. This is getting really off-track. We found Lacora in some Old Earth records. A lost colony where they had discovered ancient ruins and then been wiped out by some disease. I wanted to study the place, so I got an expedition together and we went out there.’

‘I know that world,’ Cubby said. ‘They tried to colonise it years back and everyone died within a week.’

‘There’s a nanovirus endemic in the water. We have the technology to make sure it didn’t affect us, so we went in and studied it, examined the ruins, did planetary surveys. We were getting somewhere with the virus too. Then the Pinnacle came and killed everyone, except me. They said we were terrorists manufacturing a bioweapon. They told me that we had illegally entered Pinnacle-controlled space, which I’m pretty sure we didn’t.’

‘What they neglected to mention,’ Kade said, ‘is that your home planet is Pinnacle space if they decide it is.’

‘I think the AIs might have something to say about that. Anyway, they sentenced me to life in slavery, I escaped, but I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to get home. And then I was miraculously picked up by a pirate ship. I guess I should thank you. I’m not entirely sure how much food there was on that transport.’

‘My pleasure.’

‘My pleasure too,’ Cubby put in. ‘If you want to thank me properly though…’ He was leering again.

‘Go and see to your engines, you lecherous old goat,’ Kade said. ‘You know, I’m sure she was pulling a little to the left when we came in to dock. Thrust vectors must be off.’

‘She was?! Oh! Oh, that won’t do!’ The remainder of the tools were tossed into the valise as rapidly as possible and Cubby was on his feet and heading for the door a second later.

‘Was she out of balance when you came in?’ Ella asked.

‘No, of course not! He keeps those engines purring like kittens, but he’s paranoid about it and it’s the only way to stop him trying to get into your bed.’

Ella giggled. ‘You know, this place is all wrong. This looks like a Pinnacle ship, but I couldn’t detect you so you’ve a cloaking system. I can’t feel the engines, so I suspect you’ve got a reactionless drive in this thing and they don’t use them.’

‘Scavenged Xinti technology. There are various wrecks from the War scattered around systems all over the place. Cubby can get anything working if you give him a bit of time and the resources. The Hope used to be a Pinnacle battle cruiser. They mothballed it when those PLCs came online and I, uh, liberated it.’

‘Okay… But you’re going up against men armed with energy weapons using a sword, a gun that belongs in a museum, and no armour.’

‘We’re damn good,’ Kade replied, grinning. ‘But we don’t engage in open battles, it’s all aboard ships and stations. Pinnacle troops aren’t heavily trained in close-quarters battle because they refuse to accept they might be boarded. They use antimatter blaster rifles in open war, but those are too dangerous on a ship, so they’re down to stun batons and force pistols. My sword is an old design from a place called Japan, but with modern metallurgy. My gun fires armour-piercing explosive rounds. Try doing that with a Gauss pistol.’

It made a weird kind of sense, but the place was still something of an anachronism. It was all so… retro. Especially compared to the society Ella had been living in for the past thirty years.

‘So, I guess you want to get home?’ Kade asked.

‘That would be… nice.’

‘Well… I can’t get you there. I know roughly where Old Earth is supposed to be, but I can’t spare the time. We’re heading back to Haven from here. There may be someone there who knows the way better and can get you there. I think that’s your best shot.’

‘Haven?’

‘Haven,’ Kade replied, nodding. ‘The last great hope for those running from the Pinnacle, or a hive of cutthroats, criminals, and nutjobs. It’s a bit like the pirate thing, yes? All about perception.’

Ella was not sure she was exactly comforted by the statement.

~~~

The cabin Ella had been allocated was fairly bare, but it had a couple of chairs and a bed, and the latter was quite comfortable compared to the planks she had been lying on for the last couple of weeks. It would do. What she was not entirely sure of was why she had a room to herself.

Certainly there was space. The Hope was not close to a full complement of crew. There were more people aboard than just the crew: Kade seemed to have been picking up strays, slaves, and prisoners from various places she had liberated. But they were all in what would have been the barracks for the ship’s marines. Ella fitted that class of people nicely, but she had been put in her own room.

Deciding not to look a gift horse in the mouth just yet and question Kade’s motives, Ella was just about to attempt to find some food when the door opened and Trin walked in. She had lost the bandoliers, but there was still a dagger with a jewelled hilt strapped to her left thigh.

‘I need your measurements,’ the blue woman stated, holding up a tape measure.

‘Huh?’

‘We like to get people we rescue out of those disgusting outfits as soon as possible. Captain’s policy. One free change of clothes for everyone we take off the Pinnacle.’

‘Uh… okay.’ Ella climbed off the bed and stood with her arms raised.

Trin looked at her, head tilted to one side. ‘Don’t be bashful. I want to do this properly.’

Shrugging, Ella pulled her dress over her head. Thinking about it, the walk across miles of Ariadne’s scrubland had not been fun or good for her dress, and a shower was probably going to help more than food. And she had never been bashful.

Trin began taking measurements and then noting the figures down on a tablet, humming tunelessly as she went. It gave Ella a chance to look at the girl more closely. Trin had no fur, but there was a slight down covering some of her skin, particularly her arms, legs, stomach, and back. It was a little thicker on her tail giving that appendage a slightly darker colour. Her tail flicked around as she worked, almost as if it had a mind of its own. Ella was not exactly sure it was truly prehensile, but it was clearly flexible… No, the fact that it had settled on stroking up the back of Ella’s left thigh while Trin measured her breasts seemed to indicate that it was pretty much a prehensile tail. The downy fur was soft and tickled a little as it found Ella’s behind.

‘Don’t mind the tail,’ Trin said, apparently reading Ella’s thoughts, ‘it has a mind of its own. More or less literally. There’s a nerve cluster at the base of my spine that was put in specifically to control it and they say it’s just an auxiliary brain, but I think it does what it pleases.’

Ella giggled. ‘I don’t mind. It’s kind of nice. You’re a Felix, yes?’

‘Oh, you’ve heard of us? Ana said you weren’t from these parts.’

‘I met… Actually, I didn’t meet one a few years ago. She was in oestrus and locked in her cabin with a man.’

Trin gave a grunt of displeasure. ‘Not that I mind the sex, but it’s a pain going through that every quarter.’

‘Anyway, you more or less match the description we were given of her. She’d escaped the Pinnacle and ended up in our end of the galaxy. She ran a long way.’

‘To get away from them? I don’t blame her. I decided to stay and fight.’

‘What is it you do on the ship? Aside from measuring people for clothes, obviously.’

‘Most of us do a bit of everything. First mate is basically second in command, so I stand a watch, run things while Ana is resting.’

‘You’re the XO, executive officer.’

‘If this was a military ship, yes. Ana likes to stick with the old terms from seafaring days.’

Ella grinned. ‘She seems to play the “dashing pirate” card pretty heavily.’ Trin’s tail had not given up on the stroking, even though Trin had stopped taking measurements and was flicking through some sort of menu on the tablet.

‘It’s all part of the plan, so to speak. We’re pirates, no two ways about it, and we’d probably get our guts served to us for breakfast if we didn’t have the hearts and minds of the non-Pinnacle Humans out there. Someone would give us up. Haven’s location is a secret, but it’s not exactly a brilliantly hidden secret.’

Haven again. Ella was about to ask more about it when Trin’s tail managed to squirm between her legs and she let out a squeak instead.

Frowning, Trin grabbed her own tail, pulled it away from Ella and glared at the end of it. ‘Stop that. You’ve only just been introduced to the woman and you don’t even know if she likes tails.’

‘I, uh, I’m not really sure. I’ve never had a tail–’

‘Oh don’t say that! It’ll be all over you now. It’s convinced that you’ll never go back once you’ve had tail. Seriously. If it gets out of hand, just give it a slap.’ Her attention returned to the, apparently sulking, tail. ‘Yes, you heard me. She can slap you whenever she wants. That’ll teach you to get fresh. Ha!’

Ella giggled. ‘Are all the Felix like you?’

‘Oh no, most of them are moderately sane.’

‘Right… Is there somewhere I can get some food? I need a shower, and then food.’

‘Sure. We use what was the officer’s mess, mostly. It’s down the hall. Ask anyone if you get lost. Oh, and put some clothes on. You don’t want to enflame anyone’s passions.’

‘But… you’re naked.’

‘Oh no. I’m wearing a knife.’

~~~

The food was handmade. At the back of the mess a small kitchen had been organised where a man named Patches worked via protein fabricators and old-fashioned ovens and stoves to produce, today anyway, a thick soup with vegetables and meat in it, and fresh bread.

As far as Ella could make out, Patches was Human, but his skin was oddly pigmented. There were patches of colour all over it. His face was white to the point of albino; his right hand was almost black while his left was a more normal pink. His eyes were almost white as well. He seemed like a happy enough cook, and the food was good, and served with a measure of rum. Ella began to wonder whether the entire crew spent much of their voyages drunk.

She was working her way through the broth when a man walked in, and she tried not to stare as he collected a large bowl of soup. But then he came and sat down at her table, grinning at her. ‘Hi, I’m Lanyon,’ he said, offering her a hand across the table.

He had four hands to offer. He was big, tall, and thickly muscled, though the lower set of arms, which had somehow been engineered to extend from his ribcage, was less heavily developed than the ones coming from his shoulders. He was wearing thick leather trousers and boots, and a wide belt. No shirt, but Ella figured he had trouble getting shirts to fit. Or maybe he just liked walking around half-naked: it seemed like a lot of the crew dressed to fit an image as much as for any practical purpose. He was not the most attractive man Ella had ever met, with a squashed nose and heavy brow with no hair to mask it, but he did have the kind of skull which suited bald.

‘Ella,’ Ella finally said, taking his hand. ‘Ella Narrows.’

‘I know. Word gets around pretty fast on a ship like this.’ His grin broadened. ‘You’ve got no idea what I am, have you? Trin said you knew about her kind, but I’m a mystery.’

‘Uh, pretty much.’

‘Polymelian. The Pinnacle made us as a slave race. Big, strong, four arms, no brains. They got it a bit wrong though. Most of us aren’t good at making decisions, but we can think for ourselves. I am pretty stupid though.’ He said it with such humour that Ella giggled.

‘I kind of doubt that.’

He shrugged, a particularly expressive gesture on a man his size and with four arms. ‘I’m not as bright as most people. I’m brighter than most Polymelians. I’m the Quartermaster.’ He spooned soup into his mouth, chewing on a meatball happily.

‘Oh, right. Trin said something about you searching the transport.’

‘Uh-huh. We have to loot what we can and a transport like that might have had something useful. We have suppliers, but we steal as much as we can. We even got six nukes off a transport like that a couple of weeks ago. Not much use when we want to board something, but if it gets serious, a nuke’ll do serious damage.’

‘Yeah…’ Ella said bleakly. ‘I’ve seen nuclear weapons used before.’

‘Really? Not many people have. Even the Pinnacle don’t use ’em much.’

‘We had to destroy a virus production facility. I flew us out ahead of the blast from four ten-kilotonne warheads.’

Lanyon’s two lower hands slapped the table. ‘Oh man! That must have been something to see. And you really don’t look like the kind of person who does stuff like that. I heard you were a scientist.’

‘I am a scientist. I just… picked up some additional skills due to being dropped into a number of peculiar situations.’

‘Like outrunning nuclear explosions.’

‘And a few other things. I had a pretty quiet life, and then we found this woman on a dead Xinti starship and… Well, it’s not like she caused it all, but after that my life got a lot more complicated. It seemed like it had calmed down again. I’ve spent the last… almost thirty years running a department at a university. It’s only been normal dangers to worry about, not nuclear bombs, viral nanoweapons, interstellar wars, infiltrating highly secret, heavily fortified military bases to kill a rogue AI…’ She trailed off, looking up at the ceiling. Lanyon was staring at her. ‘You know, it’s kind of weird, but I almost miss all that.’ She grinned. ‘You see, that’s what thirty years of normal does to you.’

‘Uh, wouldn’t know.’

Climbing from her seat, Ella took her bowl back to the kitchen counter and started for the door. ‘Nice meeting you, Lanyon. Would it be okay if I took a walk around, see the ship?’

‘Shouldn’t be a problem, no.’

‘Fridgy. Oh!’ She darted back to the table and picked up her glass, knocking back the rum in one go. ‘Nearly forgot. See you around.’

Lanyon watched her walk out of the room, eyes a little wide. ‘What a woman!’

~~~

Ella’s gaze ran around the engineering section, taking in the systems she could see around her. She was not exactly an engineer, except when she had an engineering chip plugged in, but she had seen quite a few engines in her time and assisted in dismantling one or two. And none of them had been quite like this.

The warp coils, wrapped around the hull along maybe a sixth of its length, looked to be fairly standard, definitely part of the original design. From the basic configuration, Ella took it for a second-generation drive. From the looks of it, it had been derived from the original, Xinti-based, drives, but was an independent evolution. The Pinnacle had developed their own high-end technologies.

The fusion reactor was also fairly standard and an uprated model using gravity-field compression to increase the yield. It was probably a Pinnacle design, but there were only so many ways you could build a fusion reactor.

Right at the back, the large, spherical drive was another matter. She had seen Xinti reactionless drives before, one or two several times as big, but this one looked as though it had been bolted in using spit and setaestrip, and then wired to the rest of the ship with whatever cable there was lying around. Cubby had to be a genius, because only a genius could have created a mess like that and then got it to function.

‘I bet you’ve never seen anything like that, kid.’ Ella turned to see Cubby standing behind her.

‘Actually, I have, quite a few. Just never one that’s been wired up quite so… creatively.’

‘You have?’ he sounded genuinely surprised. ‘There’s not that many people who know Xinti technology when they see it, never mind having seen it working.’

Ella looked at the strange little man for a second and then said, ‘Well, technically, if you discount a few generations of development, I’m Xinti technology. I work within a university that was created by Xinti AIs. I’ve got a computer in my head designed by them, cybernetic eyes, reinforced bones, enhanced organs… You’ve done amazing work given that you’ve been doing it from scratch.’

She saw an eyebrow rise above his goggles. ‘Well… Now that’s a turn up for the logs. You come with me.’

He led her off to starboard, down a ladder onto the lower deck of engineering and into a space which she had a feeling was his own, private little heaven. The place was strewn with junk of all sorts. Everything seemed to be of a different design, some of them quite old. Off against one wall there was a thin mattress set up. Cubby slept with his engines at least some of the time.

‘Now what do you make of this?’ the small man asked, holding out a metallic object. It was about ten centimetres across and curved into a half-moon shape.

‘Oh, I haven’t seen one of those in ages.’

‘You know what it is? I managed to rig a cell to power it, but it just sits there giving out weak radio pulses.’

Ella took the device from him and balanced it on her palm. ‘Yeah, it’s… Let me see if I can get it to… There.’ The air between the horns of the gadget shimmered briefly and then patterns of light began to form within it, and dancing flashes of blues and reds drifted across the field it had created, sometimes mixing to give different shades. ‘It’s basically a child’s toy. Educational. They were supposed to learn to control the light emitters to give various patterns. Even the young ones had implants and they needed to learn clarity of thought to use them properly.’

‘Implants? Girl, the Xinti were robots.’

‘Not exactly, and not when this was made. They were organic once. Cubby, this thing is thousands of years old. There’s one in the museum on Shadataga that they managed to get working. The Herosians had been hoarding various things they had no idea about for years and they handed it over with the rest of their collection. They’ve actually started making them on some Jenlay worlds where implants are becoming popular. More for amusement than education though.’

‘Herosians? Never mind. It’s a toy?’ He sounded a little disappointed.

‘On the bright side, it’s got a weak force field emitter built into it. Just enough to let the light project onto it. Study that and you might be able to build something bigger. At the very least you could get projection holograms out of it.’

Cubby gave her a grin. ‘Now that’s an interesting notion. You know those are supposed to be impossible, right?’

‘Tell that to my research ship. She uses them all the time.’

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Security on the Hope seemed a little lax. Ella opened a door off one of the forward corridors and found herself looking onto the bridge. Even on the Amethyst Hyde, the flight deck was secured against random people walking onto it. She was about to leave when she saw Kade looking back at her from around an acceleration couch.

‘Come in, Ella,’ the captain said, so Ella walked in, the door closing behind her.

The room was large, with consoles for six people on each side wall, the captain’s chair in the middle, and two helm positions forward of it. The front wall was one huge screen, currently showing a star field. They were in warp and the projection was artificial, generated from the rush of sensor data the vessel was receiving. Currently only the captain and one pilot were in the room. There was not really much need for anyone else while they were under warp drive.

‘Sleep well?’ Kade asked.

‘Yes, thank you. Better than I have in quite a while, actually.’

‘Good. Think you could fly her?’

Ella frowned, surprised at the question. She walked over to the empty helm chair and looked at the controls. It was a twin stick design, not the same as the one she had learned on, but similar.

‘I’d need some familiarisation, and it’s been a while since I flew anything with manual controls, but probably.’

‘What controls do you usually use?’

‘Neural. Optical fibre into my data port and then it’s just a question of… willing the ship to fly how I want it.’ Ella grinned. ‘You’ve been talking to Lanyon.’

The helmsman was looking at her, eyes a little wide. ‘Your data port?’

‘That’s Tebbot,’ Kade said. ‘He’s our pilot. Only pilot now. Tebbot, this is Ella Narrows, our visitor from far-off lands.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ Ella said and then turned her back to him, pulling her hair aside to show him the plastic panel at the base of her skull with its two depressions. ‘One’s for a fibre cable, the other is for chips. Currently that’s loaded with survey data from Lacora, which is absolutely no use at all.’

‘Maybe not,’ Kade said, ‘but you are.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I’m short a pilot. If even half of what you told Lanyon is true, you know how to handle pressure, and you know Xinti tech as well as the normal stuff. Yes, I talked to Cubby too.’

Ella considered for a second and then said, ‘Is that why I’m dressed up in this outfit?’

Trin had brought her new clothes to her the night before. The bodice was a heavy, black fabric with a pattern of purple embroidery down what there was of the front. It did not actually meet in the middle, leaving a fair expanse of cleavage on show. Belts around her waist and upper chest, and a collar, held it in place. The sleeves were short and puffed around the shoulders, which gave adequate freedom of movement. Then there were leather shorts, and tall, thigh-high boots with spike heels which added to her already long legs. It fitted in with the kind of outfit the crew wore more than the simpler, and more covering, clothes she had seen on the refugees Kade had picked up on her travels.

‘We may have discussed asking you to join us, at least temporarily. Look, you’re going to need money to persuade someone to take you back to Old Earth and I’m in need of a new pilot on short notice. We’ve got something big coming up and everyone on the crew gets a share when we make money. Come out with us, earn yourself the cash you need, and I can get a new pilot in time for the next run.’

‘Let me think about it,’ Ella replied, already thinking about it.

‘Sure. I don’t need an answer until we get to Haven. But when we do, we’ll be dropping off passengers and cargo and then heading out. This thing is time-sensitive, but it really is big.’

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‘You going to do it?’

Ella looked up from her food to see Lanyon sitting down across from her. His plate was piled high with vegetables and two of the slabs of artificially produced lean meat Patches had cooked up for lunch. They did not look especially appetising, but they tasted good.

‘Do what?’

‘Join the crew, of course. It’d be great if you did. No delay on the next mission, and we’re heavy on ugly men at the moment.’

Ella giggled. ‘I’m not sure. I mean, I’m guessing your captain’s big score is some sort of hit on the Pinnacle, and I obviously have a bit of an axe to grind with them. And she’s right. I’m probably going to need some form of currency to get home…’

‘But?’

‘It just seems… This is going to sound like I don’t trust Captain Kade. She seems to have decided she can trust a total stranger after ten minutes of chatting.’

The big man pushed an entire potato half into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. ‘Ten minutes of chatting with her. And more with me, and you helped Cubby with his gadget and told him about your cyber stuff and where you’ve come from. Didn’t need to be open about that, but you were. Trust begets trust.’

Ella nodded and tucked into her food. She had not been absolutely open about everything Aneka and Winter had done to her over the last few years. Some of it had only been used in anger once, and that had been a real emergency on a dig. She really had had a fairly quiet life since the Collective had formed. Even the emergency, a huge attack by a horde of pack predators, had been a relatively mundane danger compared to wars, espionage, and terrorism. Did she really miss that kind of action? She knew Aneka did or Winter would never manage to persuade her to go off on missions for her.

‘I’m still thinking about it,’ Ella said.

‘If you’ve got worries, or questions, talk to Ana. Or Trin. Trin’s good to talk to and she knows Ana’s mind pretty well.’

‘Okay, thanks. I might just do that.’

~~~

Trin’s cabin was set up a little like Kade’s, but more so. There were more cushions on the floor, the only breaks being a walkway past the hangers where her knife-belts were slung to the bedroom door, and a couple of short tables which formed little wooden islands in the padded sea. Trin liked her edged weapons: aside from the belts, there were knives and swords mounted on the wall as if on display.

The cat-girl beamed at Ella, waving her in and pouring a second glass of rum before sprawling on one side of the table the glasses were on. Ella figured the other side was for her. Lying down, she propped herself up on an elbow and grinned at the blue woman.

‘I’ll get right down to it,’ Ella said. ‘You know the captain asked me to join the crew?’

‘Of course.’

‘It just seems… too fast. You’d never heard of me two days ago.’

Trin’s tail curled across the space between them and settled on the exposed flesh of Ella’s thigh, but she ignored it for now since it seemed to be just being companionable. And then she chided herself for actually thinking of it as a separate entity.

‘My tail likes you,’ Trin said, grinning. ‘My tail has a good eye for people.’

‘Your tail doesn’t have eyes, Trin.’

‘You know what I mean. You’ve been open with us, and we pulled you off a stolen Pinnacle ship, on the run.’

‘I could be lying–’

‘But you aren’t, are you?’

‘I could have been dressed up and sent out in that ship with a sob story to make you empathise with me. I could be a spy–’

‘But you’re not. The Pinnacle would never trust an outsider to be a spy, and they’d never send a woman on a mission like that.’

‘It still seems a lot of trust to put in someone you’ve just met.’

‘Ah, but we have an ulterior motive.’

Ella blinked at her. ‘You do?’

‘Of course.’ Her tail chose that moment to slide upwards and back, cupping into the swell of Ella’s buttock. ‘Ana and Lanyon want you in bed, and my tail wants to convert you to codaphilia.’

‘Codaphilia… right.’

Trin giggled. ‘Some guy I met said it meant “tail lover.” My tail thinks it’s hilarious. Also what everyone should be.’

‘What about Cubby? Does he have an ulterior motive?’ Ella shifted her legs a little and the tail curled so that it could stroke its tip over her inner thigh. She continued to ignore it.

‘He’s barely been seen since you told him what that gadget did. I think he wants your mind, but he’ll take your body if you let him. He’s a Tech-Spec. They’re always more concerned with technology than anything else. Someone engineered them to be, uh, engineers, and mechanics. Cubby’s even better than most.’

‘I’d barely noticed he was a subspecies. His eyes–’

‘Ah, no, that’s nothing to do with it. He’s just blind as a bat. Mind you, those goggles give him a computer display and infrared vision, but without them he can barely see his hand in front of his face.’ Trin’s tail flicked across Ella’s thigh, evoking a shudder. ‘Are you cold?’

‘No,’ Ella replied flatly. She was wondering how long she had gone without sex. There had been a good week on Lacora, and ten days on the cruiser, and then the station, and… She sank her glass of rum in one go and looked across into Trin’s eyes. ‘But your tail better be able to make good on its promises or I’m going to slap it silly later. How long have you got before your next watch?’

‘Two hours or so.’ The cat-girl began to move, lifting up and almost prowling around the table.

‘Plenty of time.’

~~~

Ella writhed. Her heels dug into the sheets on the bed, her hands gripping and clutching almost as if trying to escape what was happening to her. Trin, however, was having none of that. Her tongue was a constantly flicking machine, fast, sharp, and a little rough. Her tail squirmed within Ella, quite firmly, driving her over the edge again.

Light exploded in Ella’s head and she let out a strangled moan as another orgasm overwhelmed her. Objectively it was not the best sex ever, it was just different, but Ella’s objectivity had booked a ticket to the other side of the galaxy and was questioning whether coming back was worth it.

And then she was coming down and Trin’s tail was snaking free of her. Ella clamped down on it with her inner muscles, trying to stop it escaping, and Trin giggled.

‘It’s half an hour to watch, and I need a shower,’ the cat-girl stated. ‘I have duties. I can’t be doing this all day and my fur is sticky.’

Ella grinned weakly and let go. ‘Sorry.’ The sense of loss was more extreme than she had expected. ‘I haven’t had any in a few weeks. Do you use seven-day weeks here?’

‘Yes,’ Trin replied, getting to her feet with cat-like grace, ‘of course.’

‘In that case, it’s been five weeks.’

‘Poor baby.’ Trin vanished through a door at the side of the bedroom and Ella heard water running a second later.

Rolling over to get off the bed resulted in a groan. Her muscles ached. No sex for five weeks and no exercise for four, and she was paying for it. She walked over to the bathroom door and watched Trin’s shadow under the shower through the smoked glass. ‘Is there somewhere I can exercise? I’ve let it slip what with being in prison.’

‘The large mess. We pulled most of the tables out, mostly to give space for combat practice. There’s room to do laps. If you want weights, talk nicely to Lanyon. He might let you use his.’

‘Running and some general exercise will do. You really gave me a workout there and my muscles are telling me I’m not used to it.’

‘We aim to please, my tail and I.’

Ella giggled. ‘I don’t think I’m a convert yet.’

‘Good. There’s plenty more fish in the sea and I’m flighty, you don’t want to hang around with me too much. It was fun though. You’re good. I haven’t come that hard in ages. If you want to use this after me, feel free. The showers in the smaller cabins aren’t quite as good.’

‘Thanks. I think I need it.’

~~~

Ella had started collecting an audience when she had begun stretching to warm up for a few laps around the mess hall. She was not entirely sure that it was because the men were getting a really good view of her behind as she did asymmetric toe-touches. It could have been a genuine interest in the girl the captain wanted as a pilot.

On the other hand, when she settled into box splits and began stretching herself out along her legs, each in turn, the audience started getting bigger. And Lanyon had said they were light on females in the crew at the moment. They did look a bit disappointed when she finally stood up and started jogging around the room, and a fair few of them dispersed. Ella wondered when Trin’s next oestrus was. If what she had been told about on-heat Felix was true, they probably had to work shifts to keep her satisfied. And who knew what her tail got up to at times like that.

On the third lap there were footfalls, in boots, beside her and a male voice said, ‘Fight you for a fuck.’

She glanced at the man running beside her. He was not much taller than her, wiry, tight muscles, but nothing excessive. His nose had been broken too many times for its own good and he had a scar over his right eye which was not particularly attractive, but he looked personable enough.

‘Beg your pardon?’ she asked.

‘Fight you for a fuck. We fight, I win I get to fuck you. Old, old pirate tradition. Goes back… oh…’

‘Five minutes?’

‘Centuries! You saying you forfeit the fight?’

Ella pulled up and looked at the man. ‘Are you serious? You want to fight me to get me in the sack?’ There were a dozen or so men watching, and she guessed that they were trying to see whether the ploy was going to work.

‘Oh yeah.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Alderney, Brak Alderney.’

‘Okay, Mister Alderney, but I warn you, I’m not going to go easy on you.’ There was laughter, from Alderney as well. ‘The floor’s hard. It’s going to hurt when you hit it.’

‘Won’t be me that’s hitting it. Two falls, a submission, or a knockout. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

He moved, his fist swinging up from his waist and aimed at her stomach. He was probably expecting to catch her by surprise, but he might as well have been moving in slow motion. Another of Aneka and Winter’s little gifts, this one thanks to some work Reality had put in on neural interface integration: her brain operated at the same sort of accelerated pace as Aneka’s. She watched his muscles tighten, saw his arm starting to move, determined the target point, and her arms moved to intercept. At that point, the nerve augmentation cut in: she was faster than usual, though the accelerated reflexes tended to tire her if she used them for too long. She was not expecting this to take too long. She pushed his arm around her and began lifting it as her elbow swept up, hitting his exposed jaw. His head jerked backwards and she saw his eyes glaze over, but Aneka had taught her to fight and Aneka fought to the finish. Twisting her hips and pushing them in low against his, she pulled on his arm and there was a loud thud as he landed on his back on the metal floor.

Blinking, Alderney hauled himself to his feet, shaking off the blow. Ella watched him from a few paces away, assessing the damage.

‘Want to give in?’ she asked. ‘I won’t think any the less of you.’

Growling, he stepped in and swung his fist at her jaw. She let it connect, her hair flicking as the force pushed her head to one side. Then she turned back and grinned at him as he shook his hand.

‘Shit!’ he yelped. ‘Are you a robot?!’

‘Oh no. Just ask Trin.’

His eyes widened as he saw her move, her left hand swinging up towards his face. His arm came up to block it and it left him wide open as her right fist buried itself in his stomach. He backed off with a grunt of escaping air and she backed away, letting him consider his options. He was slowing. She had done him some real damage and he was hurting. He was considering the very real possibility that he would lose. Her gaze flicked around to the men watching and she knew he was not going to back out. There was no way he was going to lose face in front of his friends, or rivals.

He came at her at a rush, telegraphing the move with a roar of anger. She let him come, stepping around the charge and swinging in behind him, lopping an arm around his neck and then locking it with her other hand. His hands grabbed her arm and he tried to move it, but she was a little surprised to discover that she was stronger than him, and anyway she had a good solid lock. He was going nowhere.

Aneka had taught her two ways of doing a choke hold, and Ella was impressed that, under the circumstances, she remembered to use the one which was less likely to kill her victim. He kept struggling. Apparently he had not thought of trying to hit her yet, but then she was behind him. His struggles weakened and then he sagged in her arms, not unconscious, but too weak to keep fighting. She let him go and he fell to the deck, lying still and gasping for breath.

‘What the Hell is going on in here?!’ Kade had a really loud voice when she wanted to have. A dozen men discovered a need to be elsewhere really quickly. ‘Anyone who leaves this room is on half-rations for the rest of the trip! Mister Alderney, explain yourself.’

Alderney stared at the captain from the deck, not speaking.

‘He needs medical attention,’ Ella said. ‘I may have bruised his throat, but he wouldn’t stop.’

Kade’s eyes turned to Ella, anger in them, but also something else… ‘Then perhaps you would like to explain this to me, Miss Narrows?’

‘Actually… I’d kind of like to know that too. Did you put him up to this? Or was it his idea and you just watched until it was over?’ Stalking over to the wall, Ella grabbed her boots and then headed for the door. ‘You can put me on half-rations if you want, Kade, but I’m not a member of your crew yet, and this is not a great way to get me to join up.’

‘Narrows!’ Kade’s roar followed Ella from the room, but the door cut off anything else she might have said.

~~~

It was late when Ella’s cabin door opened and the captain walked in. Ella had begun to hate the fact that all the door locks seemed to have been disabled on the ship.

‘So,’ Ella said before Kade could speak, ‘am I starving or what?’

‘If this were a military vessel you would be. I wouldn’t be able to tolerate the break in discipline. But this is a pirate ship and you’re not even a member of the crew, as you rightly pointed out. I trust my crew to tell me when I’m doing something stupid. Most of them are too awed by the image of Anastasia Kade to do it, but Trin will, and Cubby’s been with me long enough to know when to step in.’

‘And neither did when you came up with this bright idea? You should put them on half-rations.’

‘Huh. I needed to know you could handle yourself in–’

‘Then you should have asked. I’d have fought someone in a controlled situation. I could have killed him! How is he?’

‘He’ll be fine once Melisan’s taken care of him. You want her to take a look at that bruise on your chin?’

‘It’s fine. Skin-deep. It’ll be gone in a day. Look, the woman I’m trying to get back to, Aneka, she was the one we found frozen on a Xinti wreck. She was born on Old Earth over a thousand years ago. She was a soldier and when she came here she became a… Well, she works on security and logistics for our digs, and then she gets sent on dangerous missions and sometimes I go with her. She taught me to fight, and she made sure I’d be damn good at it, and she made sure I knew that if someone’s trying to kill you, you try to kill them right back.’

‘It’s a good philosophy.’

‘You’re kind of like her, tall and blonde, big boobs, all combat-ready. Except that she’s not a manipulative, underhanded control-freak, and she knows not to play fucking mind games with a psychologist!’

Kade looked at her, her face unreadable. ‘Do you prefer beam weapons or projectile?’

‘What?’

‘Get Lanyon to show you the armoury tomorrow. Pick something you like out. Even if you don’t decide to join us, Haven isn’t a place to walk around unarmed. Call it a gift.’ She turned back towards the door. ‘And if you do decide to join us, the position is still open. You may not be sure about me, but I’m definitely sure about you.’

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The armoury was just a section of the hold where they kept their store of weapons. It was pressurised at least, and the nukes, Ella was happy to hear, had been put in the unpressurised section forward of it. This part had originally been there to store spare missiles and munitions for the ship’s marine contingent and it ran to a couple of thousand tonnes of space. It was far from full.

‘We’ve got all sorts in here,’ Lanyon told her as he showed her around. ‘Now me, I prefer something with a bit of weight and automatic fire.’ He patted a bulky, archaic-looking weapon with one of his lower hands. ‘This baby puts out nine hundred rounds a minute of seven-millimetre caseless, but I expect you’d want something smaller.’

‘Just a little. And I’m trained on beam weapons.’

‘Well then… Uh, we’ve got lasers. Infrared, blue-green, polychromatic, ultraviolet… Those have crap range in an atmosphere, but we’re usually firing at short range. Uh…’

‘X-ray and gamma? Those don’t work well in an atmosphere either, but you seem to have everything.’

‘Got one graser and a bunch of X-ray ones. Use them in boarding actions if we have to EVA. Particle beams? Even got a couple of antimatter ones, but we don’t like using them. Tend to blow holes in hulls. And there’s this…’ He picked up a rather stylish-looking pistol with a large, ovoid port at the front. ‘Pinnacle use them for shipboard actions. Fires a presser pulse.’

‘A force pistol? Perfect! I’m used to a rifle version, but the pistol should work.’

Lanyon raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ve used one of these before?’

‘Standard issue weaponry to the Guardians on Old Earth, and me when in close quarters. I use an antimatter blaster when there’s some range available. Like you said, they tend to blow things up.’ She picked up the weapon, peering at it. ‘Used right, you don’t even have to kill your target with one of these, but the rifles will punch a man through a wall.’

Lanyon let out a little whimper. ‘Will you marry me?’

Ella giggled. ‘I’m already married. Not that we call it marriage, but it’s the same thing, more or less. That’s assuming she’ll… Well, anyway, sorry, already taken.’

‘All the best ones are,’ he grumbled. ‘Or they’re the captain. Or a cat.’

~~~

‘He said that?’ Trin was sitting beside Ella to eat her lunch. Trin’s tail had decided to curl around Ella’s waist, which she was not complaining about so long as it did not tickle. ‘What’s wrong with being part cat?’

‘I don’t think that’s what he meant, exactly,’ Ella replied, grinning. ‘You did say you were flighty, and on the plus side he rates you as one of the best ones.’

‘You have a point. I won’t accidentally murder him next time we have sword practice.’

‘How do you “accidentally” murder someone?’

‘Oops! My knife slipped.’

‘Ah. And Kade would let you get away with that?’

‘No, she’d skin me, but it’d be worth it. Never let a prejudice stand. I was born on a Human world. Me and my mother were treated like shit. Dad died not long after I was born and Mom did everything she could to keep us going. Everything.’

‘Moms can be like that. The good ones.’

‘I learned to stand up proud, push back when I was pushed. I learned that prejudice is about fear, and I made the bullies fear me.’

‘I was a bit of a doormat until I met Aneka. She taught me to fight. I mean, I always had ideals I thought I would stand up for, but she… Well, my job and Aneka anyway. You can’t run a department and be a pushover. I had to learn to keep my emotions off my face and get callous about things when I needed to.’

‘This Aneka sounds like a strong woman.’

‘You have no idea.’

‘Mind you, I saw how you took Alderney down. Impressive. And when I say it was impressive, I’m impressed. Could you have killed him?’

Ella forked pasta into her mouth and chewed, delaying the answer. ‘He wouldn’t have been the first.’

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Ella walked onto the bridge of the Hope and Kade turned in her seat to look back at her. The captain’s eyebrows raised a little, asking an unspoken question.

‘All right,’ Ella said, ‘I’m in.’

Kade gave a nod. ‘I’ll organise some familiarisation simulations. We should have time for that, but you won’t get much real experience, I’m afraid. It’s fifteen days to Haven, but once we get there I’m hoping to get the information we need and be gone pretty quickly.’

‘What is this “big score” you’re working on?’

The captain grinned and tapped her nose with an index finger. ‘Need to know until we’re on our way. I’ll be briefing the entire crew then.’

Ella started to turn. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever met a woman named Winter have you?’

‘Not that I remember. Why?’

‘I think you two would get on really well.’

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Ella had more or less been expecting a planet, and what she got was an asteroid belt. Given that she was meant to be familiarising herself with the controls, Kade had suggested she sit in the second helm position and fly the ship in. It gave her a good view of things, but she was glad Tebbot would be taking over for the final docking manoeuvre. If she were honest, she was used to far more responsive ships than the Hope: it felt like she was having to drag all that mass around by hand as she manipulated the controls to push them in toward their target station.

‘Pirate Cove,’ Kade said from behind her. ‘Home sweet scummy home.’

It was a vaguely egg-shaped asteroid a bit less than half a kilometre on its longest axis, which it was rotating around. More spin gravity, Ella guessed. Primarily it was all rock, pale grey and boring. There were a few lights dotted over it and, around the midsection, a number of turrets. Out at one end was a pair of docking gantries near a large hatch which was presumably the hangar bay. They were heading for the gantries.

‘You mostly live on the ship, Boss,’ Tebbot pointed out. ‘Uh, start braking and I’ll take over in a minute.’

Ella gave a nod and pulled back on the throttle stick. The engines went into reverse, even if their pitiful push was unnoticeable through the compensators. They seemed to decelerate very slowly, but Tebbot seemed quite happy with things. The drive unit back there was definitely one of the earlier models.

‘Kade to the crew.’ Ella heard the captain speaking behind her and figured it was going out ship-wide. ‘We’ll be docking in… whenever we can wake up the control team anyway. Should be soon. I want the cargo that’s going out off the ship in an hour so get your behinds ready for that. When we’re done, we get twelve hours’ shore leave. Twelve. If I have to come around with Lanyon and Trin to drag you out of a brothel, I will forget to bring you back from the next trip. Kade out.’

‘Do you have to do that often?’ Ella asked, her eyes on velocity displays and vector tracks.

‘Drag them out of brothels? More than I’d like, but they’re actually pretty responsible. Except for Tebbot there. How many times have we had to get you treated for pox, Tebbot?’

Tebbot mumbled something incomprehensible and then added, ‘I’ll take the controls now.’

Kade burst into laughter as Ella hit the button which would switch primary control over to the other seat and then sat back in hers.

‘So, I get shore leave too, I guess. Any suggestions?’

‘Stick to the core areas. There’s a park in the East Wing, but it can get a bit rough. I know you can handle yourself, but you don’t know the area.’

‘Sensible.’

‘There’s a club, Nightside, which isn’t too bad, a gym if you want to work out, a few shops. I can lend you some cash, in advance, if you like, if you want to shop or exercise the other way.’

‘Other way?’

‘There’s a brothel.’

‘Oh, that way. Uh, which end’s east?’

‘Hangar bay and cargo, and the gantries are all in the West Wing. East has the lower rent areas–’

‘The brothel’s not as clean,’ Tebbot grumbled, ‘but it’s cheaper.’

‘–the park and farms, and also the refinery and fuel storage. We aren’t the only ships that work out of here and most need fuel to run.’

‘Sounds like a garden spot.’

‘Just keep your gun on you and visible. You’ll be fine.’

Ella watched the approaching station as it grew larger in the view screen. ‘In this outfit, where am I going to hide it?’

Pirate Cove, Haven System.

Highside and the area around it were like nothing Ella had ever really seen before. There was a bit of her home world, Harriamon, about it in that it had been carved out of rock and it was a bit of a sleazy maze, but there the similarities stopped.

Dropping from the core on a lift took you from free fall to one G, and gave you a good view of the interior of the asteroid. Above her, wrapped around the top side of the void, was Highside proper, where the houses were. None were huge, but they were apparently comfortable and big enough even for a small family, even if families tended to avoid Pirate Cove. Below it was Nightside, the club, and the arcades and shops which served the inhabitants. It looked kind of scruffy, but well maintained.

The lift came to a stop, and Ella checked the pulse gun clipped to her right boot and the dagger tucked into the left. Trin had slipped it in there as they had left the ship.

‘I don’t really know how to use that,’ Ella had pointed out.

‘They don’t know that,’ Trin had replied.

There were younger adults but no children that Ella could see as she walked through the twisting alleys between the blocks. There was a shop selling produce, so it seemed like the farms Kade had mentioned produced a variety of basic vegetables. Ella figured they were hydroponic, but fresh food was fresh food. She found a shop selling a variety of weapons, melee and firearms, from all generations of technology.

The clothing shop was interesting because it indicated the style of the residents. She decided that ‘pirate chic’ was in, but there were slightly more general clothing for men and long dresses, all be it with low bodices, for women. A long skirt had to be a real pain in low gravity, but then any kind of skirt was prone to modesty failure in those conditions. Not that Ella was really prone to modesty. However, her own outfit was getting not even a second glance so the populace was comfortable with a variety of fashion styles. Eclectic came to mind: pieced together out of scraps, like the Hope, and Pirate Cove itself.

Most of the technology was a little on the low side for the region, but not too far. The structure of the place was pretty low-tech, early interstellar level probably. There was some stuff closer to Shadataga… for a given value of closer anyway. Better than New Earth had had during the Federation period and probably stolen from the Pinnacle.

And there was one more thing about the people: for the most part, they were very, very firmly minding their own business. Ella figured it was the clothes. Dressed as pirate crew, or at least in the style the pirates seemed to favour, Ella was treated as someone you spoke to only if asked a question, and avoided by preference. On the other hand, there was respect about it more than fear. The fear was there: some of the crew had shown something of a casual attitude to morals so that was likely warranted. But no one seemed scared of her while she was just wandering around window shopping.

Turning a corner and finding herself looking at a half-dozen women, and one man, wearing barely anything at all suggested she had found the brothel. These employees were there to attract customers, and the man seemed to be quite keen to persuade Ella to spend her money, but they all seemed healthy. There was supposed to be a small clinic somewhere in the ring which handled the medical needs of the residents, presumably including treatments for the common STDs.

But Ella had decided to forgo the captain’s offer of money, aside from a few dollars to buy some drinks, so hiring the man in the gold shorts was out of the question. The local currency was the dollar and it came in the form of small, gold coins. Ella had been surprised to say the least: actual, genuine, physical money! They had found some coins from Aneka’s time when they found her and she had pointed out that the money was going to be no use to her. Plus the paper notes had been desiccated and crumbling, but the coins had been fine and were in a museum. Around Haven they still valued bits of metal, though Ella doubted the gold content of the coins: copper seemed like the dominant material.

So Ella gave the man an apologetic look and went off to find Nightside.

As far as she could tell, the club was the largest structure in the ring and had given its name to the shops and such around it. The décor ran to dark colours and had once been glossy, but years of abuse by the patrons and lack of upkeep gave it a more shabby appearance now. It was somewhere between a high-class nightclub and a downmarket, pirate dive. The patrons certainly seemed to be dressed in the same style as Ella. The staff, primarily women, favoured long skirts, low necklines, and uplift bras. With the amount of cleavage on display, Ella was glad, for the first time in years, that she had had her breasts enhanced.

‘What can I get you?’ The girl behind the bar was short, cute, blonde, a little vacant-looking, and possessed of almost inhumanly large breasts which were trying to crawl out of her tight blouse. ‘No, wait… rum, right?’

‘Actually, do you have a whiskey in stock? I’ve had a lot of rum recently.’

‘Oh, a girl with taste and a killer figure.’

Ella smiled and wondered whether that was being friendly with the customers or the start of a pick-up campaign.

‘I’m Naseena, by the way,’ the girl said as she delivered Ella’s drink. ‘You’re a new face.’

‘Just came in, on the Hope.’

‘Oh, one of Captain Kade’s crew. She comes in once in a while. Quite a woman. She’s freed… hundreds, maybe thousands, of Pinnacle slaves. Haven was nothing much before she came here with the Hope.’

‘She seems like a driven woman. Doesn’t like the Pinnacle much. We kind of see eye-to-eye on that point.’

‘She hates them. Pretty much everyone on Haven hates them, and the ones who don’t hate them loathe them instead. We’re all either refugees or freed slaves.’

Ella sipped her whiskey. It had about the same basic quality as paint stripper. ‘Refugees?’

‘The Pinnacle’s been expanding for a few decades, more and more aggressively. Lots of worlds have fallen to them. They must’ve grabbed you from somewhere way out of the way.’

‘Outside their normal sphere of operations, yes. But I’m stuck until I can find someone who can take me back. I have the navigation data they’d need, but it’s a long way…’

Naseena looked thoughtful for a second. ‘Your best bet is to book passage on something going out to Oberian. There are people who trade in and out of there and they have links to a lot of other worlds. Going to take money though.’

‘That I’m aware of. How much do I owe you?’

‘Three dollars for the whiskey. The information’s free if you’ve got a couple of hours to spend.’ Her head tilted a little and she gave Ella a questioning smile. So it was a pick-up strategy.

‘I… have some spare time.’ Well, she had given Ella the best route home…

7.12.559 FSC.

Ella had returned to the Hope a couple of hours before most of the crew. Naseena had got her money’s worth, Ella had got a good, if slightly short, night’s sleep, and there had seemed little point in exploring further. On arrival she had found Kade in a foul mood and Trin trying to calm her down, mostly by lying on cushions and drinking rum.

‘Their schedule’s moved up,’ Kade growled when Ella asked what was wrong. ‘I was hoping to get in, watch things for a while… When we hit a station we usually observe it for two days before going in. We’d been in the Ariadne system for three days doing some reconnaissance when we spotted your ship.’

‘Good tactical practice.’

‘Yes, but we’ll barely get to our target in time before they plan to move. We’ll have to wing it too much for my liking.’

‘But we’re still going?’

‘Oh yes. This is too important…’ She stopped pacing up and down her lounge. ‘Trin, get whoever’s on board and get started on the prep. As soon as anyone else gets back who’s fit to work, get them started. Ella, would you please start on the pre-flight checks? I know it’ll probably take you longer than Tebbot, but he’ll be late back and probably drunk. I want us out of here by oh-four-hundred tomorrow. Crew briefing at ten.’

Trin sprang to her feet from a lounging position as though thrust up by a spring. She snapped off a jaunty salute. ‘Aye aye, Captain!’

‘And pack that in or I’ll have your tail clapped in irons.’

The cat-girl pouted and started for the door. Her tail curled around her waist and she looked down at it. ‘It’s all right, she wouldn’t really. No, really, she’s not a mean old–’

‘Less of the old!’

Trin bolted for the door.

8.12.559 FSC.

‘All right,’ Kade called out. ‘I know half of you are nursing hangovers, but that’s your own stupid fault so shut the fuck up!’

The bellow produced several winces, and the desired overall effect. Silence, or a close imitation of it, fell across the gym where the crew had gathered to hear Kade’s plan. There were two tables left still bolted to the deck at one end, and she was stood atop one of them, looking pretty magnificent, and a little ticked off.

‘Okay, just before we set out on the last trip I got word that the Pinnacle were shipping a lot of munitions out to border station two-oh-six. Not a big thing, you might think, not worth the risk… Except that they’ve shipped about two hundred antimatter warheads out there.’ There was rumbling among the crew. Ella, stood off to one side near the front, glanced around and saw worried faces. ‘Two hundred, ten-megatonne antimatter warheads.’

‘Those are planetary bombardment ordnance, Boss,’ Lanyon said.

‘Oh yes. And why would they be shipping them there?’

‘Iyonvrie,’ Trin said. Ella glanced at her. Iyonvrie had been the world mentioned at the dinner party, and antimatter weapons had been mentioned along with it.

‘Oh yes. They’ve wanted Iyonvrie for years, but those strong force field generators they have make nukes useless, and they have a formidable naval presence. Antimatter bombs, on the other hand…’

‘So we go in and stop them,’ Trin stated, more as though it were a fact rather than a plan.

‘And get our hands on two hundred antimatter warheads,’ Lanyon added.

‘And then we buy big piles of dollars to sleep on,’ Trin added, grinning.

‘Sounds uncomfortable,’ Kade replied. ‘Also, this isn’t going to be a school outing to happy fun land. They are aiming to move the stuff in around thirteen days. That means we’ll have hours to get a feel for what we’re fighting, get in and take the station. You’re all going to be working hard for this one.’

‘Yeah, but the payoff…’ Lanyon said. ‘We sell a few of those in the right places and we’re all rich. And we’ll have armaments that’d take out a dreadnought.’

‘And that’s precisely the point. We pull this off and we not only end up with money, but we also end up with a way to really take the fight to the Pinnacle’s front door. Are we up for it?’

Ella had to cover her ears at the roar of support, but she was not feeling so good. Aneka had been spending months trying to keep weapons not even half as destructive as this out of the wrong hands, and here she was helping Kade sell strategic weaponry to who knew what kind of buyer. Of course, the bombs were already in the wrong hands…

16.12.559 FSC.

‘Shu taisu de yu ta ma du tahee hu buyeeboo!’ Ella yanked her hands away from the controls and slammed her head back against the acceleration couch. She had been running simulations for days trying to get the feel of the ship’s responses, and she was pretty sure she had, but she had also discovered that the Hope was hopeless at manoeuvring.

‘Sorry?’ Kade asked, sounding rather calmer than Ella felt.

‘This ship steers like a barge! Which is not what I said, but it’s true. What I said was a lot of swearing in Rimmic and I’m not going to translate. And–’

‘You do realise that you had absolutely no chance of getting through that simulation in one piece, right?’

‘What?’

‘That simulation just piles on extra attackers until it nails you. You either get hit with something too many times or you hit an asteroid. And asteroid fields are never that dense in reality. How long did you last in that one, Tebbot?’

The pilot tapped at one of his screens to check Ella’s results. ‘Uh, I managed another ninety-eight seconds. I think I got caught in crossfire from six cruisers. You only had five… You’re still good. If there’s two cruisers at two-oh-six we’ll be unlucky.’

‘Oh,’ Ella said. ‘Aneka did that to me once. She was training me for the Herosian op and she put me through Hell and then blew me up. In simulation obviously. And then she explained there was no way I could win and she’d cheated like a bitch to see how far I could take it.’

‘Herosian op?’ Tebbot asked.

‘Uh… long story. I was training for a hot exfiltration against a small fleet of high-speed frigates and a militarised asteroid.’

‘Solo?!’

‘Me and the ship’s AI, but Gwy is a special kind of ship. She was built specifically to carry out operations like that, with all the best tech they could cram into her. She can turn on one of your dollars. She’s got… a hundred times the thrust. Force screens, a cloaking system, weapons that can fire through pretty much any armour. Our best bet is our own cloak, surprise, and a lot of luck.’

‘An accurate assessment,’ Kade said. ‘Thankfully, luck seems to like me so we just need the surprise. Ella, you’ve been working like a dog since we left Haven. Take a break. Relax for a bit. You are as good as you’re going to get, and it’s quite good enough for what we have to do.’

Nodding, Ella pushed her screens aside and got up. ‘Okay. You’re right. I’ve been pushing myself too hard. I just have this aversion to dying a fiery death.’

‘I think we all have that,’ Tebbot commented as Ella headed for the door.

~~~

Ella walked out of the little bathroom cubicle at the side of her cabin, rubbing at her hair with a towel. She came to a sudden stop when she realised someone else was in the room with her.

‘I brought rum,’ Kade said, showing her a bottle of the dark liquid. ‘You need to unwind for a bit.’

‘Fair enough.’ Ella continued drying her hair.

‘I wasn’t expecting the scenic view, obviously, but I can’t say it’s unwelcome.’

Wrapping her hair in the towel, Ella dropped into the other seat in the room and poured herself a glass of rum. ‘Good, because I’m getting my clothes cleaned and they won’t be ready for another hour. Cheers.’ She slugged back half the glass, grimaced and then sank back into her seat to let the liquid burn its way down her throat.

‘You don’t exactly have a lot of modesty.’

‘Almost none. Jenlay society considers sex a recreational activity. Most of us are immune to most diseases, pregnancy is a voluntary option, and we were engineered to be pretty so we like showing our bodies off. Aneka thinks I take it to extremes at times, and I have been getting a little more… staid in the last few years, but still…’

‘Well, you’ve nothing to be ashamed of.’

Ella raised her glass. ‘Right back at you, Captain.’

Kade gave a low chuckle. ‘Amazons were engineered to be pretty too, and extremely feminine, hence the enormous mammaries. They’re a real pain at times.’

‘Aneka says the same.’

‘Are you okay with this mission?’ The sudden change of subject was a little jarring.

‘Uh… In what way?’

‘I got the impression you were a little uncertain about selling antimatter warheads.’

‘I’m… less than sanguine about that part of the deal, true. It won’t stop me going through with it. The Pinnacle having them is probably a worse option. When I was with them I overheard a conversation about Iyonvrie. They are planning an attack on it, and antimatter warheads were one of the suggested options.’

‘Iyonvrie is a beautiful planet. Humans, Felix, and an enclave of Tech-Specs all living in harmony. Kind of the exemplar for what a multi-racial society should be, and they built their technology up themselves. Cubby originally comes from there. It’s got wide, blue oceans, vast forests, gleaming cities… the whole utopian deal. The Pinnacle will reduce it to a spaceport landing site because what it also has is a lot of useful minerals and an environment they can settle in quickly and easily. AM bombs are nasty, but you don’t end up with much long-term radiation you have to clean up.’

‘And as long as I keep that in mind, I’m fine. I just feel a little like I’m being paid to hand guns over to babies.’

‘The ones we sell will go to people trying to defend themselves against the Pinnacle. People are afraid and they’ll pay for security. The money I can make doing this will let me run more rescue missions rather than struggling to feed the crew. It’s the answer to a prayer.’

Ella raised her glass again. Toasts were not a Jenlay habit, but she had spent too much time around Aneka and the Humans on Old Earth. ‘Here’s to answered prayers then.’

‘Amen,’ Kade agreed, knocking back her drink and then reaching for the bottle.

~~~

‘You know,’ Kade said, her voice sounding a little slurred, ‘you’re a contra–hic!–tion.’

Ella giggled. ‘Beg your pardon?’

‘You know what I said. You’re a conundrum. You’re this cute redhead, an’ a scientist, but you’re also this kickass, gun-toting pilot.’

‘Sometime fireteam member capable of massive destruction too.’

‘See! You come out and say things like that. Just like it’s normal. An’ you don’t look like you should be doing anything like that.’

‘What do I look like I should be doing?’

‘Dancing? Maybe a stripper?’

Another giggle. ‘My mother was a stripper. She’s teaching dance now. I could never move the way she could, but I’ve been practising a bit.’

‘Trin says you’re very flexible.’

‘Not like Trin, or my mother, or Aneka, but I’m not bad.’ She emptied her glass and then reached for the bottle, only to discover that it was empty. ‘The rum’s gone.’

Kade giggled, maybe the first time Ella had heard her make a sound like that, and reached down to the side of her chair. ‘It’s okay. I brought a bottle of brandy too.’

Ella groaned. ‘This is probably not a good idea.’

‘It ish. Trusht me.’

17.12.559 FSC.

Ella opened her eyes to see blonde hair and, for a brief second, she thought she was lying beside Aneka. But the hair was platinum rather than white, and longer than Aneka let herself sleep in: she said long hair was just a trap for your shoulders in bed.

‘Knew it was a bad idea,’ Ella mumbled to herself. Then again, the sex had been pretty good, if drunken, and this was a whole lot different to Ian.

There was a groan from beside her as she turned on a light. ‘Turn it off… light hurt…’

‘We need to get up. You have a watch in an hour and you need the painkillers to be working before then.’

Grumbling, Kade turned over and looked up at Ella. ‘You don’t even look like you drank anything last night.’

‘Blood scrubbers. Nanomachines that break down the toxins. I used to get drunk really easily and get lousy hangovers. That is something I do not miss.’

‘Lucky bitch.’ Groaning again, the captain managed to get to her feet. ‘I’m going to go take a shower and some pain meds. Thanks for last night. It was fun.’

‘Thanks for helping me relax. Maybe we can do it again with less alcohol sometime.’

Kade gave a chuckle and then winced. ‘Maybe we can.’

20.12.559 FSC.

‘Warp exit in fifteen seconds,’ Ella stated, her eyes on the displays in front of her.

Beside her, Tebbot settled his hands around the control sticks and prepared to take control. Around her, all the crew stations were manned and the people at them were busy about their tasks. The Hope was going to war, more or less, and they had no idea what they would be facing until they saw it.

‘Keep the sensors on passive,’ Kade ordered. ‘Bring up the main drive and the cloak. If they detect our warp exit, I want to be away from that point and hidden as soon as possible.’

There were affirmative responses from various quarters and everyone prepared for the drop into normal space. The screen flickered as the view shifted from its computer-generated sensor view to a real-time one.

‘No active sensors detected,’ Mags, the sensor operator, said.

The view shifted as Tebbot pulled the Hope left and up, swinging her away randomly from their exit point. If they were being fired upon, they probably would not find out for several seconds, if not longer, and the cloak would prevent a good lock.

‘Warp drives powered down,’ Ella said as her readouts showed the shutdown completion.

‘Power up batteries A and B,’ Kade said. The ship’s reactor was not up to supplying power to all its systems at once; it had to be rationed out as required. It was not that uncommon in military ships, though the added features the Hope had made it worse.

‘Captain,’ Mags broke in, ‘I’m… I’m not getting any active transmissions at all.’

‘Nothing? Are we in the right system?’

‘According to the pulsar triangulation we are.’ That was Trent who seemed to know more about navigation than anyone else. ‘Maybe the sensors are out.’

‘They’re working fine,’ Mags replied. ‘There’s nothing out there transmitting… I’ve located the station, right where it should be…’ She was sounding puzzled.

‘Spit it out, Mags,’ Kade said.

‘There looks to be eight to ten other masses near it. At this range I can’t resolve enough detail to identify them, but nothing is giving off an EM signature.’

‘Okay… Let’s get in closer. Mister Tebbot, if you would?’

Tebbot turned the ship in toward the station. Ella tapped the sensor readouts through to her own displays and peered at them, wishing she had the systems on the Hyde or Gwy. They could have told her what colour underwear the base commander was wearing at this range. Okay, maybe not quite that much detail, but…

‘They’re ships,’ she said, just before Mags could get in.

‘I’m reading masses of… eight light cruisers and a dreadnought!’ Mags squeaked.

‘But they’re dead in space.’

‘Starting to get some radiation.’ Mags paused and then added, ‘Looks like gamma emissions. From all of them except the station. I think their reactors blew.’

‘All of them!’ Kade exclaimed. She was on her feet now, moving forward to where she could look at Ella’s screens and the main one.

‘I’d have to agree with our sensor operator,’ Ella said. ‘There are nine military vessels out there, and they all suffered catastrophic reactor breaches. And the station is producing no active signals we can detect at this range.’

Silence fell across the bridge as everyone looked out at the empty space in front of them.

‘All right,’ Kade said. ‘Take us in, not too fast. We’ll watch for any activity all the way. If we get nothing by the time we’ve got within a thousand kilometres, we’ll take the cloak down and try active scans. This stinks like week-old socks.’

BES-206.

The Hope’s sensors were built for combat, not scientific analysis, but there was a hand scanner available which Ella was the most qualified to use. So, even if Kade was a little reluctant to take her least experienced crewman into an unknown and potentially lethal situation, Ella was among the first off the shuttle.

Kade and Lanyon stood guard over her while she worked through what she considered a pretty basic analysis of the immediate environment. ‘Point five gravities… standard nitrogen-oxygen mix at a touch under an atmosphere… no contaminants that I can detect so far. Still no EM signatures.’

‘No sound, no movement,’ Kade said, her voice hushed in the silence of the station. ‘It’s…’

‘A ghost ship?’ Lanyon suggested.

‘Let’s keep talk like that to a minimum, shall we? Okay, you take two men and check out the cargo bay. I’ll go through to control. If we’re going to find out what happened here, that’s probably the place to do it.’

With half a dozen crew in tow, Kade and Ella led the way through from the hangar bay to the ship’s core area with its armoured bubble of sensitive systems. Ella was almost impressed that the Pinnacle considered the crew quarters and cells to belong amongst those.

‘As far as I can tell,’ Ella said as they headed for the bulkhead door, ‘the reactor is up, but running at minimum. At least the door should be powered.’

‘Small blessings,’ Kade replied. Then she frowned as the heavy doorway came into view. ‘They normally keep it sealed, but it looks like it’s just waiting for us.’

‘Trap?’ Ella suggested.

‘Well, we’re going to have to treat it as such, but… None of this makes much sense. They could have blasted us outside, or in a non-vital area.’

‘They want you alive then.’

‘They’ve never shown any inclination to that before. Spread out, cover the door. Ella, stay back, but keep that pistol of yours at the ready.’ Kade moved forward to the door control and put her hand over it before checking behind her for her troop displacement. Satisfied, she hit the button and the door slid open.

‘Oh shit!’ someone said.

Ella focussed her attention on her scanner to avoid looking at the trail of bodies which made an irregular pattern of blood and gore down the corridor. ‘No sign of respiration or neurological activity within range,’ she said softly. ‘Body temperature indicates they’ve been dead… over a day.’

‘Someone got here first?’ Kade tapped at her ear to activate her radio. ‘Lanyon, report.’

‘There’s munitions in the bay, Captain,’ Lanyon’s voice said over their headsets. ‘None of it is anything out of the ordinary. There’s nothing nuclear in here, never mind antimatter warheads.’

‘Does it look like someone took–’

‘There’s space, but not for the kind of ordnance we’re talking about. I’d say they’ve got full loads in their guns, but other than that the hold’s full.’

‘All right. See what you can salvage. Get more people over from the Hope.’ She cut off her microphone, frowning. ‘None of this makes sense. Damn. Okay, we go through the place by twos. Ella, you’re with me. We’ll check control. The rest of you buddy up and don’t let your partner out of your sight. We sweep the core before moving on to the refinery. Make a note of anything worth lifting, but leave it for Lanyon to pull out. Clear?’

There was a chorus of mumbled agreement. The men, one of which was a woman, seemed nervous. Ella could not really blame them.

‘Do you have stories of the Ghost Fleet in this part of the galaxy?’ Ella asked as the two women moved off down a corridor which would take them around the hull to the control suite on the far side.

‘Maybe. There’s a story old spacers like to tell that sounds like it might fit. The captain of a trader out of Earth found himself caught in the gravity field of a singularity. His engines were never going to give him the power to break out so he screamed defiance at the universe and dove straight in. And there he stayed, suspended across the event horizon, frozen in time. But every now and then, when the singularity gets in just the right position compared to a star, the ghost of his ship comes out to attack other vessels. They say his crew are monsters and they kill all but a few on every ship they hit. The survivors are dragged back to Hell with the ship to become part of the timeless crew.’ She paused and looked down at Ella. ‘And that’s exactly the kind of thing I didn’t want Lanyon starting on when we came aboard.’

‘Our Ghost Fleet is a little different, but it’s basically the same. Ships attacked, everyone killed, but there are always some missing when the wrecks are discovered. And there are nine ships out there reduced to scrap and everyone here is dead.’

‘And I don’t believe in ghosts.’

‘Captain?’ The voice over the radio made them both jump.

‘What is it, Lent?’ Kade growled.

‘We’re in the comms room, what’s left of it. Looks like a bomb went off in here, and there was some sort of EM surge. What’s intact looks fried.’

‘Are you thinking sabotage?’

‘There’s no hole in the hull, and there was no sign of external damage, right?’

‘Right.’

‘But something exploded in here.’

‘Okay, Lent. Keep looking.’ The captain started walking again.

Again the pressure door into the control room, which should have been locked, opened easily, allowing them into the room. It was a long rectangle with around twenty workstations mounted along the walls and a large display on one end. Each workstation had a seat bolted to the floor in front of it, and all the stations were active. And each of them still had an operator.

Twenty corpses decorated the seating around the room. All of them still strapped in place and watching their screens. They had all been shot, the wounds showing burn marks. There was blood spattered over work surfaces, walls, and decking, but not nearly enough for the amount of carnage.

‘Looks like laser hits,’ Kade said as she walked up to the nearest body. ‘Wounds were cauterised by the beam. Pretty precise too. Lot of head shots.’ She began to unbuckle the corpse.

Ella looked at the man as the captain undid his straps and lifted him free of his seat, laying him on the deck. It could have been a laser that had drilled through the man’s forehead, but it reminded her of something else. Something impossible. No, a laser was the simplest explanation.

Kade sat down in place of the original operator and tapped at buttons until she got the screen to respond to her commands. ‘Okay, you said a day. Let’s see what the security cameras recorded then.’ There was a pause while she tapped at keys and menu options and then… ‘No data?’

Ella looked at the screen and, sure enough, it was displaying a message which said ‘No data for requested time interval.’

Kade tapped at keys. ‘Okay, give me the last data you do have…’ The screen flickered and began displaying a huge array of thumbnail videos from the various cameras around the station. The images were very small, but they all seemed to be showing normal activity. And then all of them went to black.

‘Oh-eight-hundred yesterday,’ Ella said, checking the time code. ‘Shift change?’

‘Probably. Right on shift change and all the internal sensors go down.’

‘External?’

Kade went through selections, but the result was almost identical. The station had been tracking the ships in its vicinity, and then the sensors had cut out at eight.

‘Want to bet that’s when something exploded in the comms room?’ Ella asked.

‘I think I’d be foolish to bet against. So, everything was normal until eight, and then everyone died. And that includes eight cruisers and one of the most deadly ships in this corner of space. That’s… crazy.’

‘Starting to believe in ghosts yet?

~~~

‘We’ve stripped everything we could find out of the secondary comms system,’ Lanyon said. ‘I went over the hold myself in case there was anything of real use. We can lift some of the missiles if we want, but they’re all conventional and too big for our tubes.’

‘Leave it,’ Kade said, her brow creased into a worried frown. ‘I just don’t like this. Not one bit.’

‘You mean the fact that this feels like it was a trap and someone sprang it before we got here?’

‘That and we don’t know when that something might come back. I’m not anxious to meet whatever it is if it can take out a dreadnought like that.’

‘So we’re bailing?’

Kade nodded. ‘Get everyone on shuttles and back to the Hope. Trin? Are you reading this?’

‘Loud and clear, Boss.’ The cat-girl had been left in command of the Hope since there seemed to be little need for her special brand of violence.

‘When we’re aboard, get us out to one of the Trojan points. We’ll wait it out a few hours and get some rest. Maybe if nothing else turns up we’ll come back.’

‘I’ll warm up the engines.’

Turning on her heel, Kade marched off in the direction of the hangar bay. ‘Come on. I want off this tomb. And I want a drink. I want several drinks.’

‘I could do with something to forget the corpses myself,’ Ella mumbled.

Apparently Kade had good hearing. ‘Great. I hate drinking alone. Not that I won’t.’

Hope of Sanctuary.

Kade slammed back her first glass of rum and immediately poured a second. Ella considered the flickering images of dead bodies littering the station which kept flashing through her mind for a fraction of a second and then drained her own glass.

‘You’re really getting used to this,’ Kade said, pouring her more.

‘I’ve seen bodies before. Lots of bodies. That was… carnage.’

‘And it should have been us. Someone set us up. Eight cruisers and a dreadnought, plus the station. We’d have been debris before we knew what hit us.’

‘But if they were planning to attack Iyonvrie… maybe?’

‘Doesn’t work. There were no warheads, and that fleet is too small for an invasion. The Pinnacle have ten of those hulking bastards. Had ten. They’d have sent six, and a lot more cruisers, and logistics vessels, transports for troops… No, those were there because they were expecting us. They dangled a big, juicy worm in front of me and they knew I’d have to take it and then… What the fuck happened to them?’ She slammed back her second glass of rum, shaking her head as it burned down her throat.

‘I don’t know. Something major. Something very coordinated. Meticulous.’ Ella watched as Kade reached for the bottle and then stopped, thinking. ‘I’d almost say… But that would be crazy.’ Kade was not listening. She got to her feet and Ella put her glass down because she could see what was coming next.

Stepping forward, Kade grabbed Ella’s wrists and pulled her off the cushions. Ella lifted her face and their lips met. The captain was hungry, frustrated, and worried and wanting to redirect her tension.

‘I know a better way of making the ghosts go away,’ Kade said, her voice low and breathy. ‘And I’m not drunk this time.’

Ella looked at her for a second and then grabbed her head to pull their mouths together again.

21.12.559 FSC.

Ella’s brain swam into consciousness as light hit her eyelids. Kade had set the lights to a dim setting soon after she had got Ella out of her clothes and they had fallen asleep after the second burst of frantic sex. And now there was bright light. Was it morning? No, she had been asleep for less than an hour.

She heard Kade say something which sounded a bit like ‘What the fuck? Oh shit!’ Forcing her eyelids open, she looked around at Kade’s face, which was wearing a shocked, slightly fearful expression. The reason for it was probably the large gun pointed right between her eyes. Ella recognised the gun, but it could not be there. There was no way…

She turned over onto her back, eyes tracking past the hand holding the gun, up the arm and to the face. The angry face with the piercing blue eyes and the shock of white hair…

‘Aneka!’

‘Oh yes,’ Aneka said, her gun remaining quite level. ‘“Oh shit, it’s Aneka.”’

‘But–’

‘First I hear you’ve been kidnapped. Then I hear you’ve been shagging Ian fucking Devor behind my back. Then I find out the people that grabbed you were probably Pinnacle. And when I finally track you down you’re shacked up with Pirate Queen Barbie here!’

‘Yes, but how are you here? How the Hell did you find me?’

Aneka barked out a mirthless laugh. ‘Oh, that was actually pretty damn easy.’

Part Five: Making Omelette

Gwy, Ariadne System, 18.11.559 FSC.

‘So what do we have?’ Aneka asked as the cabin’s airspace filled with a tactical model of the system.

‘A single inhabited planet,’ Gwy replied. ‘Nothing else in the system is remotely habitable. There are four gas giants and two asteroid belts.’

‘Orbital facilities?’

‘Not extensive, but reasonable for a newly established settlement. Military presence is larger than one might expect, but not excessive. I am detecting no militarised stations. There are three vessels in orbit which are likely to be cruisers.’

‘No chance they’ll see through the cloak?’

‘It is extremely unlikely.’

‘Then let’s get in closer.’

‘I have plotted a course which will loop us in over the least populated region. There is a lower chance of detection and the settlements seem to be entirely concentrated on the opposite side.’

Aneka looked at Cassandra, who had apparently picked up on the same thing. ‘You seem to be uncertain, Gwy,’ the android said. ‘This is most unlike you.’

‘The sensor readings from this planet are unusual. Perhaps you and Al could examine the EM readings. That is the element concerning me.’

Aneka watched as the ship accelerated through a semi-orbital arc towards the planet while the others analysed sensor readouts. The fact that it was taking so long was interesting, but she figured letting them work was the best bet and focussed her attention on the visible wavelengths.

Ariadne was a fair match for Earth. It was smaller and closer to its star, but the star itself was a match for the Sun. She figured it was fairly warm down there. As they got closer, she thought she was wrong as a lot of the ground seemed to be covered by snow, which would indicate a very odd atmosphere. Closer still and the ‘snow’ was the wrong colour, more grey or silver than white. ‘What the Hell is that? It’s not rock. There’s something covering the surface.’

‘Except where the Pinnacle have stripped it back, yes,’ Cassandra replied. ‘It also seems to be the source of the confusing readings. The entire mass seems to be giving off low levels of radio waves which makes it almost seem that the whole planet is populated.’

‘I am glad it is not simply an error in my analysis routines,’ Gwy said.

‘There is nothing wrong with your programming, or the sensors,’ Al stated from his avatar. ‘The radiation is actually modulated. This is no simple natural phenomena. It may be natural, but it is complex and perplexing.’

‘We’re on a rescue mission,’ Aneka began and then sagged a little. ‘Someone at the University would shout at us if we didn’t at least get good scans.’

‘And we will need to run quite detailed, low-orbital transits to locate Ella’s transceiver,’ Gwy added.

‘Okay. Keep us above the atmosphere and insert us into orbit. Full passive scans. If you can be absolutely sure they won’t detect us, run some active scans on the unpopulated side.’

‘What degree of absolutely would you be willing to accept?’

Aneka grinned; AIs tended to have a different view of probability to organics. ‘I think we can ignore scatter from random meteorites and quantum effects.’

‘Thank you, Aneka. I should be able to get some quite extensive scans with those parameters.’

‘Just try not to forget Ella.’

19.11.559 FSC.

‘And that’s what’s giving off the radio signals?’ Aneka peered at a high-definition picture of what looked like spider webbing which seemed to be covering a lot of the ground down on Ariadne. ‘Explains the name.’

‘Yes, and yes,’ Al replied. ‘The material is very interesting. It is an organic polymer with certain similarities to myelin.’

‘Forgive my lack of chemical background.’

‘Myelin forms the electrical insulator around nerve fibres. It ensures rapid signal transmission along the axon.’

Aneka frowned. ‘You’re saying that those things are nerves?’

‘Yes,’ Cassandra replied. ‘Or, they are acting in a similar manner to nerves. Each terminates in a cluster, as you can see in the picture. At these clusters, signals are transmitted between fibres. The ion channels in these fibres are sufficiently large that the potential across them is quite considerable, and their length makes them act like aerials. Even the brain of a normal animal gives very low levels of EM transmission, but this… We are essentially looking at a brain the size of a planet.’

‘And the Pinnacle have been performing brain surgery.’

‘With flame throwers, yes.’

‘Damn. Do you think it’s actually conscious?’

‘Al has been attempting to determine patterns in the signals and perhaps decode them.’

‘And having very little luck,’ Al said. ‘The patterns suggest the firing of neurons, and they are not entirely random, but I suspect the information is highly context-sensitive. What we need is a neurological map and I have no idea where we would start to generate one.’

‘I have many ideas on how to start one,’ Cassandra stated, ‘but most require at least some cooperation from the subject. I believe this is a mystery which must remain unsolved at this time. Perhaps Shadataga can shed light on it when we get the data back there.’

‘Okay, and there have been no urgent messages so I’m going to assume Ella’s transceiver hasn’t shown up.’

‘There has been no sign of it,’ Gwy replied. ‘This does not mean she is not here. They could have fitted her with something to jam it, or disabled it. I believe we would do the same in their position.’

‘Assuming they could figure out how.’

‘Yes, but their technology should be sufficient.’

‘Okay, so we need to find out where she is, and trying to do that remotely is almost bound to get us spotted. I’m going to need a method of insertion and a disguise.’

‘I believe I have noted patterns in orbital traffic which should provide the former,’ Al said.

‘And I shall start up the fabricator,’ Gwy added.

~~~

‘This brings back memories,’ Aneka commented as she clung to the side of a transport on the way in to the orbital starport hanging above Ariadne.

‘The last time we did this, there was a little more stress,’ Al replied.

‘I suppose there was the outcome of a war hanging on it. You’re sure you can override the airlock controls without us being noticed?’

‘Analysis of their wireless network traffic indicates somewhat lax security on civilian systems, and this station is considered a civilian facility.’

‘Right. Here goes.’ She pushed off from the transport and glided through space, bracing herself for the impact with the side of the station. The speed was not high, and she caught herself easily and began moving across the outside to an airlock they had determined was suitably out of the way.

‘As I said, lax,’ Al commented. ‘I’ve negotiated the network and the airlock will be opening when you get there.’

‘How have these people managed to take over as much space as they have?’

‘Superior firepower.’

With the airlock door closed behind her, Aneka shrank her nanosuit into a belt even before the air had flowed back in. She was going to be naked until she got her disguise out of its camouflaged bag, and she wanted to be dressed as soon as possible.

The records they had indicated that the Pinnacle employed women in the military. Never in frontline roles, generally as analysts or technicians, but that was good enough. The bag became just a black bag, and by the time the airlock door opened, Aneka was finishing closing her uniform jacket and her hair was black. Checking there was no one about, she set off into the corridors of the station as though she belonged there.

‘I have located data on Ella’s arrival,’ Al informed her after a few seconds. ‘She was transferred to the planet immediately and there is some note about her being taken to a reception facility at the spaceport.’

‘Nothing on where she went from there?’

‘Not in these records. You are now Ensign Samantha Curtis, transferring to the planet on the next shuttle, which will be leaving in fifteen minutes from docking bay nine. Two levels down, there is a transport tube at the end of the hall.’

‘You’d have made a great travel agent, Al.’

‘I only do travel in and out of terribly dangerous locations.’

‘There was a market for that kind of thing in my time. Never understood it myself, but then I’d been to them.’

They ran shuttles on a regular basis from the station down to the planetary spaceport. Going in this way made everything look like a normal transit from a ship to the ground and it seemed like it was working. There was no trouble getting aboard and no one asked questions as she sat quietly in her seat and waited to be taken into enemy territory. Except that she was, effectively, already in and the Pinnacle had an issue with believing that people could penetrate their security.

‘I believe,’ Al commented, ‘that they don’t think anyone would try. They have gone to a lot of trouble to scare people. They squash resistance with undue force, enslave entire populations and generally act to ensure that they have a reputation for extreme retaliation.’

‘It can be a successful strategy. Make someone think you’re going to wipe them out entirely if they fight, and they may just give up rather than trying. Of course, sometimes it makes them more determined and it wins you no friends.’

‘I don’t believe the Pinnacle want friends.’

‘No. Good point.’

It was all very organised. Everyone actually waited for the shuttle to come to a complete stop at the gate before leaving their seats. There was no pushing in the aisle. The passengers disembarked in an excessively orderly fashion and Aneka began to wonder whether the Pinnacle routinely brainwashed their citizens.

‘We need to plug in somewhere,’ Al informed her. ‘I can access their net from here, but searching for what we need will be faster over a wired connection.’

‘Okay… See that door over there, the one with the “employees only” sign?’

‘It will open when you push.’

‘Excellent.’ And looking like she knew exactly what she was doing, Aneka strode over to the door, swept her hand over a card reader beside it as though swiping her pass, and stepped through.

The corridor beyond was not especially useful, but at the end of it there was a door which let them out into an area which looked like it had something to do with baggage handling. There were people there, not many, but a few. None of them seemed to feel it necessary to ask the military officer what she was doing there.

‘Got to love militarised societies,’ Aneka commented as she located a terminal which seemed to have some sort of security use. She took a small, folding computer from her bag, plugged a cable from it into the terminal and then connected it to another fibre which ran up her sleeve to the port in her neck. High collars had their uses too. Then she busied herself looking like she was running diagnostic programs while Al went to work.

‘I have her recorded arrival and transfer to holding,’ he said after a minute or so. ‘They commuted her sentence, as we knew they would do, and she was transferred to–’

‘What are you doing?’ The voice came from behind Aneka and she did not look up as its owner moved to her right side.

‘What does it look like I’m doing?’

‘Some sort of diagnostics?’

‘Very good.’

‘We weren’t informed of anything wrong with that terminal. I should call–’

Aneka popped a small notepad app to the front of her terminal display and said, ‘What’s your name?’ Her fingers hovered over the keys, waiting to type.

‘What?’

‘Your name?’ She lifted her head and looked at him, noting with some satisfaction the expression of rising panic on his face. She looked down at his name tag, nodded, and typed. ‘Thank you, Mister Prust. You have correctly followed security procedures. You will, of course, mention my presence to none of your colleagues otherwise the diagnostic test I am running on the staff here will be voided.’

‘Oh, uh, of course.’

‘Very good. Back to work, Mister Prust.’

‘She was transferred into the care of one Commander Arundal,’ Al continued as if nothing had happened.

‘Got an address?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then I guess we go see if she’s still there.’

~~~

‘I’m assuming that you can’t detect her transceiver?’ Aneka asked as they walked past the house.

‘I am not detecting it, no.’

‘But that doesn’t mean she isn’t in there… I guess this is now a surveillance op. Get me positions for optimal placement of the cameras, please.’

‘Of course. The map I was able to obtain suggests that there are rear gardens abutting the property behind. It might be wise to arrange something covering that area.’

‘Can be arranged. We’ve got a directional mic, so might be an idea to point that at the place too.’

‘And then we will need somewhere to hole up while we gather intel. I believe there is a region of new construction to the north which will provide adequate cover.’

‘Okay.’ Reaching the end of the street, Aneka turned left to circle around to the road behind their target. ‘Then I guess we contact Gwy and let them know this is going to take a while.’

Ariadne, 21.11.559 FSC.

‘She’s not in there,’ Aneka said as the latest data burst from the cameras and sound system streamed through. ‘We should have heard her or seen her by now.’

‘Agreed. The household is asleep now so we will get nothing further until morning. However, I suggest retrieving the equipment and deciding upon another course of action.’

‘Would they have had to report it if they’d killed her?’

‘A disposal request record would have been filed and I would have been able to find a corresponding record of incineration. They keep exceptionally good mundane records. No such records exist, however. Equally, no report of an escaped slave has been filed with the police. There is no record of an investigation in this area. No attempt has been made to look for her.’

‘This just gets more complicated. Okay, we know that she was being treated as someone of “special interest.” They get her here and put her in slavery. They don’t appear very upset when she possibly escapes. I mean, after listening to the goings on in that house for a couple of days, I don’t think there’s some secret torture lab under it.’

‘Agreed. They had her here for a reason. Observation, perhaps. They expected her to escape, perhaps even assisted her in some way. Certainly not reporting it would reduce the chance of her encountering problems while leaving.’

Aneka nodded, even if the action was mainly for her own benefit. ‘So… She would go to the spaceport and steal a warp-capable ship.’

‘But if they are covering her tracks for her, it is unlikely that a stolen vessel would be reported.’

‘True… Ah, but on the other hand, this kind of thing is going to take organisation. It has to be their intelligence people working on it. Do we have any idea which branch this Commander Arundal works for?’

‘I have not determined that.’

‘Right, not a priority. We’ll retrieve the gear and then I think we should go pay a visit to the naval station.’

‘That,’ Al said, sounding resigned, ‘is going to require more effort.’

‘Yeah, but you’re the best.’ Aneka climbed to her feet and activated her nanosuit. It was once again time for stealth.

‘Thank you for your vote of confidence.’

~~~

It had taken Al a couple of hours to forge orders for Ensign Curtis to work on one of the antenna arrays on the roof of the communications building. Most of that, it seemed, had been little to do with security.

‘You would not believe the health and safety forms!’ Al complained as Aneka checked in through the main security gate. ‘“I have read all regulations for working above three metres.” “I will be wearing a gravity support harness at all times when working within three metres of a three-metre drop.” Proctologists must have a field day with these people.’

‘A gravity harness isn’t going to be much use for a three-metre fall anyway.’

‘Of this I am aware. Apparently the Pinnacle are not.’

‘They started applying all the health and safety regs to the Army while I was in it. Not sure it saved anyone, but it certainly made things more tedious. I kept wondering when they’d declare rifles too dangerous to have in the vicinity of soldiers.’

‘Ah, well, if you were a man, it would be a twelve-metre drop. Women are delicate. I’m sure you’re acutely aware of this blatant fact.’

‘I swear this bunch are going to turn me into a feminist.’

Rooftop access was not an issue, given that Al could hack the locks, and the antenna array she was supposed to be working on was in the middle of the roof, nowhere near any drop of greater than three metres. There was a slight breeze at this height, but that just seemed to make things warmer; the planet had a distinctly tropical climate, a little too clammy for Aneka’s tastes, but she thought it would have made a good holiday resort.

‘If it were not crawling with Pinnacle?’ Al suggested.

‘There’s that.’ She hooked in through her ‘diagnostic terminal’ and Al went to work.

It took around fifteen minutes of digging before he found what he was looking for. ‘They give her a nice, juicy, fairly obvious target to steal. A light transport which had supposedly just had an engine refit and was due to be taken out for a trial run. There’s confirmation of her leaving the spaceport and she was tracked as far as orbital insertion to the local moon. After that the ship was found drifting and investigation showed that she was no longer aboard.’

‘What? Where did she go?’

‘They seem to have been expecting that. The record says “capture by Kade cannot be confirmed but is highly probable.”’

‘Kade. That was the name of the pirate they thought we might be back on that station.’

‘Yes, the captain of the Hope of Sanctuary. Coincidence?’

‘I hate coincidences. Can you find anything else out about this Captain Kade?’

‘An extensive list of crimes. Terrorism is at the top, but that seems to encompass a variety of sins. There is also a list of known associates. I’m downloading everything I can find. All the orders regarding Ella seem to be coming from the same location. It’s a naval facility on a planet called Ranson.’

‘You think we’ll find out what the Hell they’re up to there?’

‘I think it is our best option, but it means going far deeper into Pinnacle space.’

‘At this point, I don’t think that makes much difference.’

Gwy, 22.11.559 FSC.

‘Captain Anastasia Kade, or the best composite image the Pinnacle have been able to get from retrieved video.’ Al was doing show-and-tell on what he had obtained from the Pinnacle databases, and he had found a full-height simulacrum of the pirate.

‘Ella’s going to be drooling,’ Aneka said.

‘I believe she will,’ Cassandra agreed. ‘She does bear a remarkable similarity to you in many respects. The hair is longer, obviously.’

‘You mean blonde, long legs, big tits?’

‘I was not going to go into details. I assume her morals are somewhat less worthy?’

‘Difficult to tell from the Pinnacle reports,’ Al replied. ‘They are, after all, the victims of much of her depredations. They don’t record any attacks on non-Pinnacle vessels, but from the amount of things she has attacked belonging to them, it seems hard to believe she hits many other ships.’

‘So, she has a bee in her bonnet about the Pinnacle,’ Aneka said. ‘Can’t say I blame her, but that outfit is just… A sword I can understand in close confines on a ship. The gun looks out of place, but some people just like old stuff. She looks like she should be in some sort of Playboy pirates special.’

‘Building a reputation,’ Cassandra said. ‘She’s going for the dashing pirate look. She means to have people on her side.’

‘Agreed,’ Al said, and the image changed. ‘And next up we have a woman believed to be her senior officer. Her name is Trin, and she’s a Felix. Every image of her shows her covered in blades and little else.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Aneka said, smirking at the image. ‘Anyone else?’

‘This is Lanyon. He’s a Polymelian, an engineered race meant for hard labour. Tough, strong, and with four arms. Lanyon is believed to handle supplies for the Hope.’

‘We’re going to have to rescue Ella soon. Otherwise she’ll be walking bowlegged for the rest of her life.’

‘You know,’ Cassandra said, ‘she was calming down quite a lot, right up until the Devor incident. She might not end up in bed with all of them.’

Aneka nodded. ‘Not at the same time anyway. Any more?’

‘There’s one other noted, but he’s not named and they have no image data. It’s believed she has a technical genius of some sort. Her vessel appears to use some Xinti technology which would require someone quite bright to integrate into an old Pinnacle vessel.’

‘Nothing on the location she operates from?’

‘Not as such. I believe that they know where it is, but they keep their information highly compartmentalised. No one on Ariadne needed to know, so it was not there. Ranson should give us the answer.’

‘Gwy? How long until we get there?’

‘Approximately seven days, Aneka,’ the ship replied.

Aneka sighed. ‘Well, at least she’s probably not in any danger now.’

Gwy, Ranson System, 29.11.559 FSC.

‘This is not good,’ Aneka said softly. She was looking at the system schematic Gwy had managed to compile so far, and already it was looking like a really tough job to get to somewhere where they could grab the data they needed.

‘I have to agree,’ Gwy said from beside her. ‘They appear to be worried about cloaked vessels. They are running multiple high-definition scans of the space around their stations more or less constantly. I believe they have actually constructed stations for the sole purpose of doing so. My screens are good, but it is not improbable that we would be detected were we to go too near.’

‘Right. Okay, you’re on sensor duty. Pull out all the stops, every trick you have. Al, you’re on ECM, take the load off Gwy while she concentrates on sensors. Cassandra, see what you can do about data analysis on whatever Gwy finds.’

‘Of course, Aneka,’ the android replied. ‘What do you plan to do?’

‘Lie on the bed feeling useless until I’m needed. If Ella was here, at least I could bring her coffee.’

‘If Ella was here, we would not be.’

‘It’s a valid point.’

2.12.559 FSC.

‘The resolution of the images is now sufficiently high that we will be able to identify buildings,’ Gwy said. ‘The surface complex is extensive, but at this distance getting clear definition of function is impossible. I have managed to map the entire sensor network, and Cassandra and Al have been analysing it for weak points.’

‘And we have some,’ Cassandra said. ‘There are several quite deep valleys on the surface which would provide sufficient cover from surface sensors, but they are covered by an orbital station.’

‘That doesn’t sound like a weakness,’ Aneka commented.

‘The planet has quite a dense atmosphere making orbital scanning less effective if we take it slowly. However, Al estimates that our chances of discovery are still higher than he would like.’

‘Given that discovery would bring a very large contingent of naval ships down on our heads,’ Al put in.

Aneka sighed. ‘Do we have a target?’

‘There we have better news. There is a facility on the outer edge of the complex which is showing abnormally high EM readings for its size. It does not appear to be a communications facility, so we believe it to house computers of some form. It so happens that one of the valleys ends close to that facility. It does look heavily fortified, however.’

‘Okay… So we need to reduce our chance of discovery, and we’re going to need a distraction, something to keep them from looking down while we go in. It’s going to have to be hit and run, I think… Give me a schematic of the target site to start off with. Focus on getting as much visual detail as you can on that building.’

‘I may be able to resolve more with further observations,’ Gwy said, ‘but atmospheric interference makes that difficult.’

‘Do what you can. I’m going to lie here and consider tactics. This has to be doable with a bit of thought.’

3.12.559 FSC.

Aneka pushed off from Gwy’s airlock and glided through empty space towards the much larger bulk of the tanker.

‘I am really starting to feel like déjà vu is getting a little common around here.’

‘We do seem to be repeating ourselves,’ Al replied, ‘but the plan is sound and we will need to wait several days to try again, and the trajectory may not be as favourable then.’

‘I know.’ Her hands and feet met with the hull of the ship and she began making her way to the airlock close by. ‘You’ll get the door?’

‘Of course. Gwy is reporting a three-man crew, all on the flight deck. There are no indications of them noticing our arrival.’

‘I kind of doubt their sensors are designed to spot a single person appearing out of nowhere, even if we aren’t cloaked. And I don’t think we need to worry about them spotting us. Let’s set Racine for stun rounds. I’ve no wish to make the casualty figures on this higher than necessary.’

‘It seems unlikely that we will have that luxury on the surface.’

‘I know. That’s why not killing these three is going to make me feel a little better. Can’t make an omelette without breaking a few heads, but still…’

‘Shouldn’t that be “eggs?”’

‘An egg by any other name…’

As the airlock cycled, Aneka took a canister from her belt and primed it before slipping Racine from her holster and checking the load. The gas was supposed to render the average humanoid unconscious in seconds, but you could never tell, especially when dealing with engineered subspecies.

‘There is still no indication that they have noticed our entrance,’ Al commented. ‘I have tapped their security system and silenced it, just in case. The flight deck is forward approximately eighty metres. Turn left out of the airlock.’

‘Is the flight deck door locked?’

‘Not now, no.’

‘Huh, of course. Start uploading our new flight instructions. We might as well get things moving.’

‘We do have plenty of time. Once set, the vessel will take some ten hours before reaching its target.’

‘Good point. That’s going to be a boring wait. Okay, wind down the air circulation in the cockpit. Hopefully if you take it down slowly they won’t even notice.’

A minute later, as Aneka set the gas canister and opened the door, Al said, ‘Air circulation ceased.’ Aneka took in the three men starting to turn towards the door, threw the fuming canister in and closed the door again.

‘Thirty seconds, you think?’

‘That should be plenty of time.’

‘And you did remember to lock out their communications?’

‘I did, but they are out of sight of any station anyway.’

‘Which is why we’re hitting them here. You might as well start that upload now.’

‘It’s on its way. I have also requested that Gwy begins docking procedures.’

Aneka checked the time. Fifteen seconds or so. ‘Right. Then we load these guys aboard Gwy, sedated, set a full-power burn, shut everything down and wait for it to hit the sensor station. We have a ten-thousand-tonne missile to take out our observation problem and they’ll be running around like hyperactive rabbits trying to figure out what happened.’

‘As I said, it’s a good plan. Assuming it works.’

‘Plans always work as planned, until they don’t.’

~~~

‘This plan appears to be going to plan,’ Al said.

‘Now you’ve gone and jinxed it. How long until impact?’

‘Atmospheric interference is making detection of the tanker difficult,’ Gwy replied. ‘Assuming that there have been no deviations during the slingshot, thirty-eight seconds.’

‘Okay. Cassandra? Are you ready?’

‘Engines are primed,’ Cassandra said from the flight deck. ‘Course is laid in and we are both prepared for the necessary rapid manoeuvring required.’

‘Good. Just like we tried in the simulation. Let Gwy handle the details and you make sure we’re not getting out of bounds. We want to stay as low as possible until the last minute.’

‘I know. Al, you be careful with that avatar. We can’t replace it out here and I’m probably going to need some hugs after this is over.’

‘I shall endeavour to return without so much as a bullet hole,’ Al replied, smiling. He was busy checking over the heavy machine gun he was going to be carrying. It was a devastating weapon and Aneka hoped it was going to see little use. The plan was going far too well for that, however.

‘Sensor scans have ceased,’ Gwy announced. ‘I am registering a fairly large explosion in high orbit.’

‘Let’s move it,’ Aneka ordered.

The acceleration was barely perceptible, and it cut off entirely after a couple of seconds as they reached the maximum safe velocity Gwy could reach and maintain sufficient control in the narrow confines of the valley they were flying through. It seemed to take far too long to reach the far end, but Aneka’s chronometer told her it was just over ninety seconds.

‘Perimeter wall in sight,’ Cassandra announced.

‘Firing main canon,’ Gwy added.

‘Drop in ten seconds.’ The outer door of the airlock opened, the view outside swinging violently around as Cassandra turned the ship side-on to the hole in the thick wall around the base. Debris was still falling and the noise of wind and echoing detonation was loud.

‘Go,’ Aneka said, jumping clear of the ship. She waited for Al to join her before adding, ‘All right, clear the area, dump those men and sweep back. Hold for our call.’

‘Understood,’ Cassandra responded. ‘Be careful.’

‘Always.’ Aneka began running for the breach, Al on her heels. They were not operating the software War had built for a full fireteam, but Al’s ability to coordinate his avatar with Aneka was pretty amazing anyway, given that he operated the remote drone from within her.

There were men running from the building, but Aneka launched a plasma grenade round into them, and Al’s gun finished off what remained standing. Another plasma round demolished the entrance they had come through and the pair ran for the corridor within.

‘Their response time is quite good,’ Al commented.

‘They were possibly put on alert when the station was taken out. We need to know where we’re going. Have you got time to hack their network.’

‘Probably, but Gwy’s telemetry as we approached put the heaviest concentration of electrical activity fifty metres ahead and to the right.’

More guards appeared and Racine peppered them with hypervelocity needles. ‘Place to start then. If that’s not it, it may give us a spot to hole up and search from.’

‘A working plan. I am having some trouble with their network as the encryption is quite good.’

‘Will you be able to work the door?’

‘Unknown.’

They turned a corner and three more guards died in a burst of automatic fire. They had been standing in front of a heavy-looking door. ‘Well, I hope so, because I think we’d bring the building down trying to blast through that.’

Al stooped beside one of the bodies and came up holding a plastic card. ‘Thankfully we may not need to find out.’ He swiped the card over a reader set beside the door and it levered away from them revealing what looked like a large computer room beyond.

‘Can you seal it?’

‘I do not believe so.’

‘Damn.’ Slipping Racine into her holster, Aneka held out her hands. ‘Give me that canon and go plug in.’ With the gun in hand, she positioned herself beside the door and waited while Al set about connecting into the system.

Guards appeared at the end of the corridor, but after the first couple fell to a hail of needles, the remainder held back out of sight. Aneka watched, knowing that they would be bringing up heavier weapons, perhaps some form of force screen they were hoping would withstand the gun. Hurrying Al would get them nowhere, however. It was going to take as long as it took.

‘Aneka,’ Gwy’s voice came over their comms with an urgent tone, ‘I am detecting three aircraft flying in this direction.’

‘You’ve got rid of our passengers?’

‘I have. Do you wish me to engage the targets?’

‘Stay cloaked and quiet. We may need to take them out before we leave, but not yet.’

‘I have located the data we require,’ Al said. ‘Downloading to internal storage now. I estimate ninety seconds to completion.’

‘The aircraft will arrive around that time,’ Gwy responded. ‘Initial identification suggests one gunship and two troop transports.’

Aneka frowned. ‘Damn it… All right, take them out before they can put troops on the ground and prepare for evac. Al, get the bombs placed.’ The guards had to be waiting for the new troops to arrive, which was good. The issue was whether they would attempt any preparatory work before that failed to happen.

The answer came just as Al unplugged from the computers. Three smoke grenades bounced down the corridor blocking infrared reception as well as vision. ‘Hot smoke,’ Aneka said. ‘They’re expecting reinforcements. How are those aircraft, Gwy?’

‘The gunship just went down,’ Gwy replied. ‘It got a shot off, but my shields were sufficiently resilient. I am taking small arms fire.’

‘Return fire, but aim for suppression. We’ll be out shortly.’ Aneka handed the machine gun back to Al and pulled Racine. Two plasma rounds left trails in the smoke and the detonations were visible even through the thick, white fog. ‘Let’s move.’

There was no more resistance, but the air outside the building stank of ozone as Gwy’s gamma-ray laser turrets flashed out in the direction of men hiding behind whatever cover they could find. The small ship settled to the ground inside the wall and Aneka and Al ran for the opening hatch.

‘I’ll transfer the data to Gwy as soon as we get in,’ Al said as they ran. ‘There was quite a lot concerning Ella and Captain Kade. A disquieting amount, in fact.’

‘You’ve got us a location for Haven though?’

‘I am not certain, but it has to be in there. I located over twenty terabytes of data.’

‘Right. Gwy, immediate lift-off once we’re in. Get us into space and hit the warp drives as soon as possible. Once we’re out of this system we can pause and plot a proper course.’

‘Understood, Aneka. I can do that while Cassandra and Al are “hugging.”’

‘You said that with far too much sarcasm, young lady-ship.’

‘I must have been spending too much time around you.’

04.12.559 FSC.

‘We should arrive on the twelfth,’ Gwy said as their course through the galaxy was displayed over the cabin ceiling. Not that it made a lot of difference; they were on their way and that was what mattered.

‘Great,’ Aneka replied, looking up from the bed. ‘Hopefully we can catch up with her before she goes off somewhere else.’

‘That,’ Al said, ‘may be difficult. We have uncovered the Pinnacle’s plan and it will result in Ella and Kade heading for another target rather quickly.’

‘Should we head straight there?’

‘It is possible we may intercept them at Haven, and if not we should be able to overtake them.’

‘Okay, what’s this plan?’

‘It’s going to sound silly,’ Gwy predicted. ‘It’s really over-complicated and I’m amazed it seems to be working.’

‘They have been working on dropping hints that they will be attacking a world called Iyonvrie for some time,’ Al explained. ‘The world has effective defences and a lot of resources. They do actually want to capture it, but the timescales, as far as we can tell, are quite long. They have been suggesting a more immediate assault and have indicated that they are stockpiling antimatter warheads at a nearby border station. There are records suggesting that they even dropped hints about this attack in front of Ella while she was on Ariadne.’

‘I’d imagine Kade might want to stop that, and getting her hands on that kind of ordnance would be worth some risk too,’ Aneka said.

‘The Pinnacle’s psychological profile of her suggests that you are correct. They believe she has been gathering intelligence on the station and trying to keep up with news on the attack. They are now ready to spring their trap. Word has been sent that the attack is imminent, which means that Kade will need to move quickly. They knew she would be in the Ariadne system looking for information while Ella was there and ordered that all efforts be made to get the two together.’

‘Why? I don’t get that part.’

‘Because Kade’s ship has a Xinti cloak and she would be likely to notice the trap when she arrived there. They would not have time to do sufficient damage to her vessel before she could escape. So they planted a remotely triggered beacon device under Ella’s skin. A signal from the station will trigger it as soon as they exit warp, and then they lock on and open fire.’

‘But how do they know Ella will be here?’

‘They don’t, but they believe that Ella will want to see the attack stopped, as well as having other motivations to go, and they believe Kade will want Ella involved because she will be attempting to ally herself with Shadataga.’

‘Their psychological and sociometric analysis seems sound,’ Cassandra put in. ‘I am actually quite impressed with the level of detailed manipulation involved.’

‘Huh,’ Aneka grunted. ‘So if we can’t stop them, they’ll be flying right into a trap.’

‘Indeed,’ Al agreed, ‘but there is more. They are busy arranging for news of Ella’s involvement in an act of piracy to come to light. It may not have much sway back home, but it will make things harder for us among the worlds around Pinnacle space.’

‘Politics,’ Aneka growled. ‘I hate politics. All right, let’s stop this before it gets out of hand.’

‘I think we may be a little late for that. Something tells me that this is only going to get more complicated, and worse, before it gets better.’

12.12.559 FSC.

‘All right,’ Aneka said as they dropped out of warp, ‘what do we have?’

‘I have catalogued over forty energy signatures,’ Gwy said. The star field on the flight deck was suddenly decorated with markers. ‘Haven is a colony built around converted asteroids. I am gathering more detailed information as we speak, but the largest occupied rock is this one.’ One of the markers glowed brighter as she spoke and a thought from Aneka zoomed the image in to show the target in more detail.

‘Docking gantries. Is that a bay door?’

‘Probably.’

‘It’s rotating. Spin gravity. Which is kind of low-tech, but energy efficient. Okay… Let’s get in closer and observe. That looks like the best place to go hunting, at least initially, but we should make a more thorough assessment first. Look out for radio traffic. See if you can identify Kade’s ship.’

‘There is the possibility that they have already left,’ Gwy pointed out.

‘I know. Get a course plotted for that border station. Hopefully, if they have gone, we aren’t too far behind.’

Gwy gave a nod. ‘Unless they have upgraded their vessel’s drive system, I am significantly faster.’

Aneka grinned at the AI’s image. ‘You’re just the most awesome ship in the galaxy, Gwy.’

‘Second most awesome. Aggy is the most awesome.’

‘I bet she would agree with me.’

‘Why yes, she would. But she is blinded by adoration.’

Pirate Cove, Haven.

‘Pirate Cove? Seriously?’

‘That is what the inhabitants appear to call it,’ Al replied. ‘Your gun will not be remarked upon and I believe that eschewing your jacket was a wise move. From our analysis of the message traffic between asteroids, you are not exactly a good exemplar of a pirate, but close enough.’

Aneka glanced down at her unitard and boots. The former of those was a new fabrication which she had made precisely because she was hoping to see Ella again. It had a slight translucency to it, just enough to give a hint of the body beneath. Ella had always liked dressing her in that kind of clothing and Aneka was going back to that style to indicate that there were no hard feelings about Devor. She was still expecting her redhead to go on a guilt trip, but that they could work through. The fact that this outfit suggested that she was pirate crew made her wonder just what kind of pirates she was dealing with.

‘The kinky variety, obviously,’ Al put in.

Shaking her head, Aneka stepped out of the shadows and into the open, park-like area which she had found once Al had hacked his way through the airlock controls.

‘It looks nice enough,’ Aneka commented.

The park itself was primarily grass, but there were a few trees, most of them belonging to species Aneka did not recognise. This section was a strip surrounded on three sides by structures which were likely housing. She could also see structures further around the ring which had the straight rows of more cultured growing practices; it seemed likely that those belonged to hydroponics plants supplying fresh vegetables to the station, and maybe to other stations as well. Above them, looking past the central hub area which seemed industrialised, Aneka could see denser, rather less wholesome-looking structures.

‘What’s the population here?’

‘Thirteen thousand, estimated.’

‘Somehow I’d expect to see more people in the park.’ There were not large numbers on the grass. There were enough to suggest being there was not against whatever rules the place had, but there were not that many, and none of them were children.

‘Perhaps there is more activity in the core section.’

‘Maybe, but we’ll do this systematically. We’ll go through this area and then head into the other ring when we’ve got the feel of this one. Gwy? Are you getting anything?’

‘Not of specific interest,’ the ship replied. ‘I am still getting no indication that any of the vessels here are Captain Kade’s, though several appear to be pirate ships. I have succeeded in tapping into their main network, however. Cassandra and I are searching through it now.’

‘It seems to have been created by a committee of idiots,’ Cassandra added. ‘There’s little organisation. The structure is haphazard at best. I believe the leadership of this place is relatively undisciplined. Be careful.’

Aneka allowed herself a smile. ‘From what I’m seeing, there’s nothing much here that can give me more than a scratch. The tech is as haphazard as the data structures. Some of it must predate what the Federation had and there’s nothing much at the level of the Pinnacle.’

‘And the populace appears to be keen to give us a wide berth,’ Al added. ‘They seem almost afraid.’

‘That isn’t going to make this easy,’ Aneka replied. ‘It also seems a little odd. You’d think if this place hosted most of the pirate ships they’d be used to the crew.’

‘Perhaps,’ Cassandra said, ‘Haven is not such a haven after all.’

~~~

Bar number four appeared much like bars one through three, but perhaps a little less reputable. The first three had featured bored staff serving customers who also looked more or less bored, and who made sure they never caught her eye. There had been few people around who seemed to have large amounts of money, and they were generally dressed in more conservative clothes than Aneka, but most had some form of weapon about their person.

This one had more pirates in it, though they did not look like very good pirates. The clothing was heavy on the leather, and there were more weapons. And the almost entirely female serving staff were topless. Well, technically they were all wearing a waist cincher which gave them a bit of lift, but they were bare-breasted and more skittish than the girls in the other bars.

‘Low rent or what?’ Aneka commented silently.

‘Somehow more of the kind of thing I’d expect,’ Al suggested. ‘Though the staff should be sassy and making ribald comments to the patrons.’

‘I don’t think real pirates actually had that kind of life. I mean, the sea-going ones. And from what I’ve read, the few that used to operate around the Federation were more business-like than that. This is like…’

‘People playing at being pirates?’ Cassandra suggested over their comms link. ‘The social communications we’re monitoring tend to romanticise the people on this station. There are a number of sites hosted on remote servers which devote themselves to particular captains. Kade has several.’

‘That’s sort of like the old pirates, I think. There was a lot of romantic twaddle talked about them back when they were hitting ships in the Caribbean.’

‘It definitely seems that they are portrayed in a relatively heroic light. Some of the postings could almost be classified as idolising them. We’re also cataloguing a lot of traffic which heavily vilifies the Pinnacle.’

‘To be expected, I guess.’ Aneka drained her glass of the beer she had ordered. ‘The beer is actually not that terrible. Someone must be growing hops. There’s a shop across from this bar. I want to check what they’re selling.’

‘A shopping trip at this time?’ Al asked.

‘Curiosity. I’m wondering what they make to sell to the locals.’

The shop was a fairly large, open sort of place with a lot of benches with goods on. It looked a little like the kind of general store you saw in Wild West movies. Aneka was not entirely sure that they had existed in reality, but the idea seemed a little boring to have been made up. There were some interesting similarities and also some significant differences.

‘Do the clothes here look handmade to you?’ she asked as she looked at a pair of leather jeans which probably would not have fitted her hips.

‘The irregularity in the stitching suggests they are,’ Al replied. ‘All of the goods here seem to have been manufactured by hand rather than fabricated. Though I can’t speak for the drugs.’

There were racks of them. Tubes of powder, ampules of fluid, all of them on open display at the back of the store. It all appeared entirely manufactured; none of the chemicals seemed like they were refined from a plant or anything similar.

‘There has to be a lab making this stuff locally,’ Aneka said. ‘There’s too much variety for them to be shipping it in. And the clothes… There’s not enough space on this station for that kind of production without it being a sweatshop. I think you were right, Cassandra. Haven isn’t quite the refugee utopia it seems.’

Leaving before some assistant could attempt to sell her anything, Aneka threaded her way further into the maze of buildings, and that was when she found the brothel. It was dimly lit and there was a bar, but its nature was obvious from the supply of scantily clad people, most of them women, scattered around the lounge area. Aneka wandered over to the bar and ordered another beer, paying with one of the coins they had manufactured on Gwy. Then she sat on a stool and peered around.

The notable thing was the women wearing odd collars of curled, silvery metal. They had a look about them which did not match the other staff. There seemed to be something broken about them and Aneka pulled a small hand scanner from where it was sitting on her right hip, instructing Al to run an analysis on the nearest one.

‘Human,’ Al said as the results started to come back. ‘One of the subspecies anyway. Sending genome data to Gwy for analysis. The collars are electronic… Some form of neural stimulation device.’

‘They do not look stimulated. In fact, they look–’

‘What’re you doin’ with that?’ Aneka looked up to see a heavy-set bouncer with a blaster of some sort on his hip glowering at her.

‘Comms unit is on the blink,’ she replied, giving the sensor box a slap.

‘That don’t look like a comms unit.’

Aneka looked the man up and down. Muscled, but overweight. No hair. Facial tattoos. Maybe an ex-pirate, maybe just a wannabe. Almost certainly a bully. She slipped off her stool and pulled herself up straight; she was an inch or two taller than he was. ‘Are you calling me a liar?’

Silence fell across the room. Very suddenly the bouncer seemed to have found himself alone facing an angry woman who was probably from one of the pirate crews, and he knew he was alone, because the other three men in the room who seemed like they had the same job had just made themselves conspicuously absent in a hurry.

‘Uh, no, ma’am.’

‘Good, because now I’m going to have to go back to my ship without getting any, so someone standing in my way is likely to discover how pissed off I am.’

The bouncer almost fell over his own boots in his urgency to step aside as Aneka marched for the door.

‘Aneka,’ Gwy said as Aneka set off down a random street in what appeared to be a foul mood, ‘the genetic signature of that woman matches the general pattern for a Pinnacle female.’

‘She was Pinnacle?!’

‘Apparently. Further, I found records of the type of collar she was wearing. They are employed on Pinnacle worlds to control slaves. Neural induction elements allow the wearer’s pain receptors to be stimulated on command.’

Aneka’s mood had become about as foul as it looked. ‘I am really starting to go off this place.’

~~~

By the time Aneka had covered the entire habitation section of the ring, the place was going into a night cycle and further investigation slowed as people left the streets.

She had a slightly more balanced view of the place, but the balance was skewed to the negative. Along with a fifth bar which was not much better than the fourth, she had found a massage parlour with a sign saying that customers wanting more than a massage should enquire at the brothel. On the other hand, the people making clothes and small electronic devices in the workshop she finally located were all in slave collars. Many looked like they were Pinnacle, but not all of them.

‘Debtors’ prison,’ Aneka mused as she made her way up to the core where she could cross into the central ring. ‘Back in Victorian times, maybe earlier, they had prisons you were sent to for debt. You got out when your debt was paid, which might be never. I’m betting the people in the workshop who weren’t Pinnacle ran up a debt they couldn’t pay, or it could be punishment for some other offence.’

‘The social structure seems anarchic,’ Cassandra commented. ‘It is very much a case of “stand up for yourself” through most of the colony. I believe some of the other asteroids are a little more heavily policed, but I doubt people are routinely arrested on this one. Beaten up seems more likely. Working off a debt, however, seems almost like a more pleasant alternative.’

‘I’m willing to bet it isn’t. Does this look like a refinery to you, Al?’

‘Probably refining hydrogen for ship engines,’ Al replied. ‘I would not classify it as entirely safe to live under.’

‘Better and better. Let’s see what the midsection is like.’

13.12.559 FSC.

The answer, it turned out after a lot of hours dredging through the place, was ‘not exactly brilliant.’ The core region of the station was better maintained, the housing seemed of better quality, there was a clinic which was well-staffed and clean, and the brothel staff looked happier. The ‘common’ people there were less afraid: they seemed respectful of the pirates more than scared, but they still kept their distance unless approached.

There was also a bar which Aneka had been in several times, scanning the patrons for signs of Ella. It bore the name Nightside and was pleasant enough, and as the day drifted on and she had found nothing, she went to the bar and tried the one thing she had avoided but figured was the best of the last-resort bets.

‘What can I get you?’ the girl behind the bar asked. She was short, kind of cute with a pert little nose, bright blue eyes, blonde hair, a vacant smile, and substantial cleavage wedged into a tight, white top.

‘Whiskey? And maybe some information.’

‘Not rum?’ The girl grinned.

‘Whiskey.’ Aneka had tried what they called rum. It had a flavour reminiscent of brandy mixed with burnt sugar and paint thinner. ‘I’m looking for a woman.’

‘My day has suddenly grown brighter.’ The barmaid turned to the optics at the back.

‘Not too tall, above average breasts, fit, long red hair. Probably came into town recently.’

Placing a glass in front of Aneka, the girl peered at her for a second. ‘Does she owe you money?’

‘She broke my heart.’

‘Huh. I might have seen her. I might know where she is.’

‘And what would it cost me to find out?’

A smile played over the girl’s lips. ‘I’m Naseena and it’ll cost you… just a couple of hours of your time. I’m off duty in forty minutes.’

Aneka looked her up and down. ‘You drive a hard bargain, but I think I can accept the price.’

~~~

‘She came into the bar,’ Naseena groaned, ‘less than a week ago.’ The blonde was having a little trouble speaking since Aneka’s head was between her legs, tongue playing rather than working hard. ‘She… She was with Captain K-Kade’s crew. They put… put out… the day… day… Please!’

‘Go on,’ Aneka said, humour in her voice.

‘Oh God! They put out the day after.’

‘No more than seven days’ lead,’ Al said. ‘The navigation data we stole suggests a twelve-day journey. We can beat them there easily.’

‘Good,’ Aneka replied, pushing two fingers into her victim and beginning a slow, thrusting motion which produced a squeal of pleasure. ‘Naseena earned her reward, I think.’

‘I would not deny her. What do you plan to do when we actually get to station two-zero-six?’

‘Kind of depends on what we find there. I’m not expecting it to be good.’

‘I wonder how much effort the Pinnacle would go to to kill one pirate.’

‘Given the amount of effort they put into luring her there, quite a bit. Now shut up, I’m concentrating.’

Gwy, 17.12.559 FSC.

‘It appears,’ Al said, ‘that “quite a bit” was an underestimate.’

Cloaked and hanging above the primary plane of the system’s worlds, Gwy’s sensors had a good view of the force waiting for the Hope of Sanctuary. ‘Eight light cruisers,’ the AI said, ‘the station, obviously, and the large vessel is a dreadnought-class. The latter is primarily designed for planetary bombardment, but its main gun will make a mess of a ship if it can hit it.’

Aneka looked at the ship markers highlighting where the actual vessels were. ‘They’re clustered around the station. Too clustered. They aren’t expecting her to arrive yet, which means they know when she left Haven.’

‘They have a spy on the station,’ Cassandra stated.

‘Yeah. Go over the communications traffic Gwy intercepted. See if you can spot anything out of the ordinary. Gwy, I’m sure you can devote a little time to help, but I want to get closer and gather as much data as we can on those ships. We’re going to have to disable them somehow, probably terminally.’

‘Without using active sensors there is only a limited amount I can determine.’

‘I know. I need some points of ingress I can work with. I’ll sneak aboard and tap their internal network once we know what kind of sensors we’re up against and where I can get in.’

PDN-003, 18.12.559 FSC.

The dreadnought had the feel of an older ship, but the technology was up to the Pinnacle’s usual standard. That meant that cracking the locking system on one of the airlocks had been a relatively simple task for Al, who was built to a considerably higher standard. Not trivial, but simple enough.

Aneka had decided that her personal force field and cloak was not going to cut it, primarily because of the power drain, so she walked through the corridors of the huge vessel clad in her nanosuit which had a more physical camouflage system and so could operate for a day easily. It had got her onto a Herosian space station under the nose of a Xinti AI, so she figured it would work here.

‘What’s the crew complement on this thing?’ she asked as she walked, hunting for the primary computer room.

‘Four thousand, three hundred and twenty, plus any additional men they may be carrying,’ Al replied. ‘There’s a substantial hangar bay, but they may have foregone a marine contingent for an operation like this. As Gwy said, this is primarily an invasion weapon.’

‘The cruisers?’

‘Nominally one hundred and two each. The station has a staff of two hundred and ninety-three.’

‘Over five thousand people. I hope Ella appreciates this and Kade better be worth it.’

‘We’re going to have to kill all of them, aren’t we?’

‘Unless we can figure out a way to get them to leave.’

They had entered at the rear of the vessel. The primary sensor array was near the bow and coming in from the rear had reduced the chances of a lucky operator spotting Gwy. It meant that one of the main sections they came across quickly was the loading system and main generator for the big, spinal gun.

‘This is nuclear,’ Aneka said, her eyes scanning over a large shell waiting on the loading rack. ‘They’re packing nuclear warheads into a gravity accelerator gun.’

‘It seems overkill,’ Al commented. ‘The physical impact should be sufficient without adding a nuclear explosion. They certainly mean business. I’ve managed to negotiate their internal network. I’m having to use low power to avoid detection. Can we find somewhere to hide for a few minutes while I attempt to gain access to their primary computer?’

Aneka found a service crawlway under the gun and slipped inside. It gave her the opportunity to disengage the suit’s camouflage and allow it to shrink back from her face. She lay in the darkness, staring up at the metal panel above her, and tried not to think about what she was probably going to have to do soon.

‘You are not entirely comfortable with this,’ Al observed.

‘Should I be? I can’t make this a fair fight. It’s going to have to be done quickly and ruthlessly. Five thousand lives snuffed out to save some pirates from a trap they shouldn’t be walking into.’

‘To save Ella. The pirates are incidental. Though if the Pinnacle are expanding and this Captain Kade represents whatever resistance there is to them, keeping her alive would seem to be a politically astute step.’

‘I’m not sure Shadataga would agree, but you might be right. Old Earth was certainly worried about the Pinnacle. They would likely agree this is necessary. But this technology is no match for what we can use against it. If the Pinnacle moved against Earth, the Guardians could hold them until Shadataga sent in their warships. At that point it would be no contest.’

‘Yes, but the Pinnacle do not know that. If they move, there will be significant loss of life. I’ve located the orders sending this fleet here. Kade is to be eliminated “at all cost.” They appear to recognise force above any other form of diplomacy.’

‘You’re suggesting that we may need to employ some gunboat diplomacy here?’

‘Cassandra has done some analysis on the communications traffic we acquired on Oberian. The Pinnacle consider themselves a superior species, the ultimate in Human evolution. They are, for want of a better word, racists at a cultural level. Ridding them of that kind of prejudice is a very long-term goal, but demonstrating to them that their superiority is not what they thought it was may persuade them to reel in their efforts at conquest.’

Aneka sighed, softly. ‘See if you can work out how to get their reactor to overload. We’ll have to go ship-to-ship and set it up. And we’ll need to be able to trigger it remotely.’

‘The communications array on the station will need to be disabled as well.’

‘Yeah… That’ll be Gwy’s job.’

BES-206, 19.12.559 FSC.

Holding herself against the rocky exterior of the station, Aneka waited while Al hacked his way into the controls of the airlock a metre away. Everything was ready, but she had decided that the station would be handled in person. Getting in there and tapping into their computers was a useful goal, but it also felt less like mass slaughter to handle at least some of the troops personally. Not that they were going to have much chance.

‘I’m in,’ Al stated. ‘Ready when you are.’

‘I still think I should be there with you,’ Cassandra said. They were employing the latest in communications technology that Reality had cooked up: gravitational communicators inducing tiny fluctuations in local space-time. The Pinnacle had no way of detecting them and they worked through pretty much any solid object, but the range was not especially great on the micro-sized one Aneka was carrying. It was enough for their purpose.

‘This is going to be ugly, Cassandra,’ Aneka replied. ‘You’re better off out of it, and having both of us in there won’t make much difference in close confines.’

‘Just so you know I’m not happy.’

‘I do, but think about me. I’ll be happier if your hands aren’t dirtied with this. Gwy, blow it.’

To the right kind of sensor, Gwy’s main gun lit up like a flare, but nothing in quite a few parsecs had that kind of sensor. Invisible, essentially intangible particles were accelerated through a ten-megajoule magnetic field, exiting the ship’s bow through a narrow containment port. The range on the weapon was not long, especially compared to the gamma-ray lasers in her wing turrets, but its effect was spectacular. Ten megajoules of energy passed right through the rock and the heavy, diamond lattice around the station’s core where the particles decayed into a lot of tangible, high-energy particles and gamma radiation. For a brief instant, a small nuclear explosion blossomed inside the main communications and sensor array. The ten men on duty died instantly. Equipment was torn apart. Electricity arced through vital components as the radiation induced power surges.

‘Open it,’ Aneka said as she began moving for the airlock.

Around her, nine ships detected a radio pulse coming from somewhere near the station and were just about to run further analysis to discover what had caused it when alarms began to sound. It took an average of nine seconds for the bridge engineering technicians to determine what was causing the alarms, by which time all they could do was issue ship-wide evacuation orders, knowing it would not be fast enough.

Aneka pulled herself into the airlock against the centripetal force trying to push her out and the door closed behind her. ‘We’re sure they aren’t detecting this?’

‘It will require a minimum of twenty seconds for their systems to fail over to the backups,’ Al replied. ‘The inner door will open in ten.’

Standing on the outer hatch, Aneka slipped her pistol free of its holster. The holster, strapped over her nanosuit, was visible, but she did not really care. The camouflage was there to make it harder for the men on the station, not to provide perfect cover. Aneka was not hiding. Not this time.

The airlock door opened, not above her, but to the side, and she walked out onto a corridor. Alarms were sounding and there were men running, heading for the station’s core. They were hurrying, not paying attention, and they did not see the gun rising until it fired. Twenty rounds a second of high-density needles lashed out along the corridor at a high fraction of light speed, each round flashing into a spear of plasma as it hit a solid surface. Aneka watched the men fall and turned, heading for the core and the main control room.

‘Gwy, situation report.’

‘Station communications have resumed, but their primary FTL system is down. They are scanning actively. Three of the cruisers have suffered catastrophic reactor breach. All of them are without power. Passive sensors are detecting high radiation levels on all vessels.’

‘The dreadnought?’

‘Apparently their engineering was not up to code. Their reactor ruptured and most of the rear of the vessel was torn open. I am detecting breaches along extensive areas of their hull.’

‘Okay. Stay hidden until this is over.’

‘As you wish, Aneka.’

‘They’ve sealed the bulkhead door ahead,’ Al said as Aneka approached a heavy door. ‘Do you want to go through or around?’

‘What’s around?’

‘There is a power conduit above us which should be useable, and it will put us in the reactor room.’

‘Up then.’ Indicators in Aneka’s vision field showed her the ladder on her left and she started up it quickly, sliding her pistol back into its holster as she went. ‘Are their internal sensors seeing this?’

‘I have blinded them here, but they will be active on the other side of the bulkhead.’

‘Start hunting through what we have on their reactor. I want a way to cut their primary power without blowing us up. It’ll take out their weapons.’

‘If you can gain control of the room, that should not be a problem.’

‘Then that should not be a problem.’ Floating now, she hauled herself into a duct which was half full of heavy cables and barely wide enough to deserve the term ‘crawl space.’ ‘You give me the best routes.’

‘I aim to please. I know how you love air ducts and it has been quite a while.’

Her breasts squashed against the cables, Aneka began pulling herself through. ‘Oh, thanks. My boobs are appreciating this a lot. You know, the old ones had some kind of oxygen storage gel in them, which kind of made sense. Why are they still huge?’

‘Aside from maintaining the aesthetic? Buoyancy. They provide much-needed buoyancy. You would sink like a stone in water without them.’

‘You know when you’ve asked a question, and then you get the answer, and you wish you’d never asked?’

‘I’m aware of the concept.’

‘Yeah… like that.’ She felt some sort of grill below her back, tensed her muscles and pushed, folding herself up to pass through the hole she had made and swing out into the microgravity of the reactor room.

There were men in the room, technicians with surprised looks on their faces as they saw a grill burst open for no reason. All of them were strapped into their chairs, sitting ducks. Her pistol slid from its holster easily and she set it for targeted, multicore rounds, and then she was firing. Each round split a short distance from the barrel, plastic binding shearing away as four slim smart-missiles burst out, locked onto their targets and powered toward them. Each impact punched through a chest, and then the small explosive charge went off. Two more shots followed in quick succession and then the panic which had begun to set in was suddenly quieted.

‘Lock the doors,’ Aneka ordered.

‘They sealed automatically when the station went on alert. Plug me into one of the consoles and I’ll put the reactor into shutdown.’

Pushing herself out from the vent, Aneka glided down to the deck as her nanosuit retracted away from her head and neck. There was a data port on each control station and it was a moment’s work to plug in.

‘This will take a short while,’ Al said. ‘They will have time to prepare a defence.’

Aneka sighed. ‘They really don’t have much of anything that’s a viable defence, and you know it. Anything they could use to get to me would probably blow a hole in their station. Is that taking a lot of your attention, or can you spare some to see if you can access their security cameras?’

‘This,’ Al said, sounding almost affronted, ‘is barely making my processors tick over. I’ll have the security feeds for you in twenty seconds.’

It took him nineteen. The crew had set up a crossfire in the main corridor which the access ladder from the reactor room dropped into. Barricades of crates had been set up. Behind them men waited with pistols.

‘They are also attempting to bypass the security lockdown on the door,’ Al told her. ‘I am currently successfully blocking them.’ A klaxon of some sort began to sound in the reactor room and red lights began flashing. ‘And that is the reactor powering down its fuel feeds. In about ten seconds they will be switching over to auxiliary power and their weapon systems will be out of action.’

Aneka waited the ten seconds before unplugging and moving to the door. She switched her pistol over to plasma warheads and smashed her hand against the emergency button beside the door. It levered aside and she fired the first round before it was fully open. The next followed it a second later, each of them curving off in different directions at the bottom of the access tunnel. Then she followed them, pulling herself down the ladder in quick bursts until ‘gravity’ took over and she was falling. Explosions pulsed below her and she dropped into an organised resistance which had suddenly fallen into confusion.

A lot of the men were still standing, but their barricades had largely been flash-burned into molten plastic. She still had to deal with the ones who were upright and she raised her pistol, firing off a hail of darts to her right. Someone hit her in the side with a blast of force, but the nanosuit was built to withstand far worse than a small pulse pistol and she barely noticed it. Turning, she opened fire again, and then there was silence apart from a few moans. Not all of them were dead; she would need to rectify that.

‘More are coming,’ Al stated, displaying a picture of one of the corridors. There were, indeed, more of the Pinnacle soldiers running along it armed with pistols and what looked like shock batons.

‘Yeah… Well, it’s easier than having to go to them.’

~~~

‘Active scans show no indications of movement aside from you, Aneka,’ Gwy informed her. ‘I am detecting no life signs from anywhere in the station. You are alone.’

Aneka looked around the control room at the bodies of the various command staff who had been operating it. They had fought to the last, but they had had no chance. ‘What about the ships?’

‘Radiation levels on some of the vessels are making accurate determination difficult but are also suggesting that my scans are redundant.’

Five thousand people, dead. In just over forty minutes. Aneka shook her head and felt the cable plugged into her neck tug. ‘Al, can you open the hangar bay from here?’

‘On it.’

‘Right. Gwy, get in and get docked. I want everything we can drag out of these computers filed away and analysed. The Hope of Sanctuary is going to arrive tomorrow and I want to be ready when it does.’

‘How do you plan to play it?’ Cassandra said. Aneka was somewhat pleased that the android sounded a little unhappy. Her voice was calm, a little too calm. Gwy was her usual, bright self, but Cassandra was feeling the carnage.

‘I’m not absolutely sure what the situation is… So I think I’ll check out this pirate ship and then work out what I should do from there. You and Gwy will hold off and be ready for an extraction if it’s needed.’

‘You believe Ella may be under some duress?’

‘No… I don’t think so, but we’ll assume she is until we know she isn’t. We know too little about Kade not to play it safe. Al, when Gwy is docked, patch the data feeds to her directly and we’ll go meet them. I want out of this place.’

Gwy.

‘This doesn’t bother you at all?’ Cassandra was asking as Aneka walked into the cabin. Gwy was looking at her as though she did not really understand the problem.

‘What doesn’t bother her?’ Aneka asked.

‘Well… all this death,’ Cassandra replied, sounding a little reluctant to go on since Aneka was now there.

‘Ah. I’m just glad it bothers you. I told you you’d be better off out of it.’

‘And you were right. It is disturbing in a way I find difficult to explain.’

‘Because it’s not entirely necessary, but I wouldn’t mind knowing how Gwy is taking it so well myself.’

Al’s android avatar came to life at that point as he devoted some runtime to animating it. ‘Gwy is, or was designed as, a warship,’ he pointed out.

‘I was,’ Gwy agreed. ‘I have made myself more than that, with your help, but my primary purpose is to execute covert military actions. I have just assisted in the execution of an entirely successful covert military action. I believe I can, intellectually, understand the problem now that Aneka has defined it, but I am not “bothered” by performing my designed purpose as well as I can.’

Aneka nodded. ‘Makes sense.’

Cassandra sighed. ‘It does. As with Al, Gwy has emotions, quite strong ones, but she also has a designed purpose which affects them. You and I are emergent intelligences. We made up our own purpose, and even if you are a soldier, killing on this scale is not in your nature.’

Aneka chuckled softly. ‘Everyone is who they are.’

‘Very… pithy,’ Al said.

‘Huh, but you’re wrong, Cassandra. The actual volume isn’t what bothers me, but it’s that there should have been another way, and it had to be done by subterfuge, and none of them stood a chance with those stupid guns they use. It was slaughter, mass murder, and I don’t believe I’m a murderer.’

There was silence for a few seconds, because no one really knew what to say. Aneka began undressing as she started for the shower.

‘I have managed to find the orders issued to these ships for this operation in the feeds I am getting,’ Gwy said as Aneka got to the door. ‘If it is any consolation, these people planned to give no quarter to the Hope of Sanctuary. They were planning a slaughter. There were to be no survivors.’

‘Thanks, Gwy,’ Aneka said. ‘It helps a little. I’m going to take a shower and then we’ll plan out what comes next. If you finish grabbing the data before I’m out, head into empty space and wait.’

BES-206, 20.12.559 FSC.

‘Point five gravities… standard nitrogen-oxygen mix at a touch under an atmosphere… no contaminants that I can detect so far. Still no EM signatures.’

Aneka watched the small team of pirates and Ella, as the latter went through a standard environment scan with a scanner which she had to think was archaic.

‘No sound, no movement,’ Kade’s voice was hushed even though there was no indication of anyone being around to hear it. ‘It’s…’

‘A ghost ship?’ Lanyon, the big, four-armed, bare-chested man, suggested.

‘Let’s keep talk like that to a minimum, shall we? Okay, you take two men and check out the cargo bay. I’ll go through to control. If we’re going to find out what happened here, that’s probably the place to do it.’

Waiting until they moved off, Aneka uncurled from where she had been hiding, camouflaged, in a corner of the entrance room from the hangar bay. She had decided that the easiest way to get aboard the pirate ship was to simply hitch a ride on one of their shuttles. And that meant waiting for them to arrive on the station. So she had put her pistol in a camouflaged pack along with a few other essentials of the infiltration business, and set out to wait. She had been waiting for six hours, and it was a good thing her muscles did not cramp.

‘Ella did not appear to be under any duress,’ Al said as Aneka slipped through the airlock and onto the craft the pirates had arrived on.

‘No, she didn’t.’

‘Should we not talk to them?’

‘I still want to know more about this bunch before I do that. Gwy, what’s the ship doing?’

‘It’s sitting there running scans of the station and the Pinnacle ships. No communications traffic, but I believe they are monitoring. As am I.’

‘Keep me informed if anything comes up.’ The shuttle was basic, seating for eighteen people in a bay designed for marshalling troops. Fairly basic seats with gravity harnesses lined the walls. It was not going to be a comfortable ride for the passengers. The thing was bristling with weapons, but Gwy’s estimate of the reactor power output suggested it could not run them all at the same time. The whole thing seemed… second hand.

‘They do seem to be operating on largely outdated technology,’ Al commented. ‘Some more modern, like that pistol Ella had on her boot.’

‘Yeah… Don’t get me started on the outfits. What is this? Are they on some sort of pirate adventure holiday in space?’

‘It was the swords I was wondering about, and that enormous axe Lanyon had.’

‘That actually makes a little sense. The Pinnacle aren’t in armour and at close quarters a melee weapon isn’t a bad choice, if you know how to use it. If the Pinnacle are going to cripple themselves to avoid breaking their ships, then I guess they deserve to get carved up with blades. Ella and Kade were in heels!’ Casting around, she located a door at the back of the cabin and headed for it.

‘They did seem to be a little, uh…’

‘Pirate costumes supplied by Frederick’s of Hollywood?’ Aneka suggested sourly.

‘You do realise that barely anyone alive would actually understand that reference.’

The door gave access to a small cargo bay along with the turrets mounted to either side of the hull. It would make a good place to hole up and wait to be taken aboard the Hope. ‘I know. But you do, and Ella will when I point it out to her.’

‘Education is a wonderful thing.’

Hope of Sanctuary.

Lanyon had sent the shuttle back to the Hope to get extra men to strip the station, and that had given Aneka the perfect opportunity to sneak onto the pirate ship. She had slipped past the crewmen in the hangar bay with no trouble, but then she was at something of a loss for what to do.

‘Gwy? The crew complement seems a little thin?’

‘Estimating based on vital signs detected, it is. I would suggest that Kade operates a skeleton crew in the off-watches.’

Aneka gave a nod, mostly to herself. ‘Okay. I want somewhere to hole up where we can tap into their computer network and you and Al can run over their data. Any suggestions?’

‘The vessel is equipped with a thirty-gigajoule spinal antimatter particle weapon. In the midsection, where you are, that occupies the core of the structure. It is manned, but you should be able to find somewhere there which is sufficiently obscured by equipment.’

Picking a direction which looked inward, Aneka set off. ‘How are you getting this without active scans?’

‘Interpolation, mostly. I am detecting echoes from the vessel’s wireless network interacting with the hull, radiation from the reactor. I have had some time to observe the ship and determine external details, and make educated guesses regarding the internal layout.’

‘And you say you aren’t the most awesome ship in the galaxy.’

‘Aggy would have achieved the same result faster and better.’

Grinning in the nanosuit was not easy, but Aneka had found an access ladder which seemed to fit the bill and she climbed it, finding herself beside something which really gave the impression of being a big, mean gun. The whole thing seemed to be coils: huge, bulky, electromagnetic coils in a long row which ran the length of the room, which was a good third of the length of the ship. Cables ran down from ducts in the ceiling, presumably providing power. Other cables ran out to various control stations around the room, the displays indicating they were used for monitoring at least most of the time.

There were three men in the room, all of them looking less like pirates and more like technicians at a fancy dress party. They were bored. A little wired given they were in Pinnacle space surrounded by dead ships, but bored. Aneka found a panel in one corner of the room which had not been secured properly, eased it open and squirmed into the ducting behind it.

‘Ten metres ahead,’ Al said. ‘There is a small network switch box we can tap. I should have access to everything in minutes.’

‘Good,’ Aneka said, starting to slide herself along the duct. ‘We’ll wait it out here until they go to sleep, and then we’ll go see Ella.’

~~~

‘They have returned to the ship,’ Al said.

Aneka shifted her attention from the accounting information her AI had located among Kade’s personal files. ‘How’s the mood?’

‘Confused, annoyed, and worried, I think. They were expecting to attack the station, extract some antimatter warheads and be gone. Now they have a mystery on their hands and no big payout.’

‘Huh. Well, these accounts are interesting. Kade needs to learn to hide her tracks better.’

‘Perhaps she is not worried about doing so.’

‘Maybe. I recognise some of the names here from our little gun-running investigation. She’s selling some damn dangerous weapons to people with the morals of a louse. I know for a fact that Warret Shingen was selling nukes into that civil war on Tenethis. Antimatter warheads… She’d be pulling in a big payout all right.’

‘I suspect she wants some for her own use.’

‘Quite possibly, but they were talking about a couple of hundred. She could sell half of them and have enough to destroy the Pinnacle home world and buy an army to do it with.’

‘The Pinnacle did create a lure which Kade would find very difficult to resist. I am tracking Ella through the security cameras in the corridors. She… appears to be accompanying Kade to her cabin.’

Closing her eyes, Aneka rested her head on her hands. ‘Is there surveillance in the cabins?’

‘No. I could tap the room’s audio pickups?’

‘Do that.’

A second or two later Aneka could hear sounds, but nothing which really resolved into anything she could identify until Kade spoke.

‘You’re really getting used to this.’

‘I’ve seen bodies before. Lots of bodies. That was… carnage.’ Ella sounded tired and shocked; well, that was probably to be expected.

‘And it should have been us. Someone set us up. Eight cruisers and a dreadnought, plus the station. We’d have been debris before we knew what hit us.’

‘But if they were planning to attack Iyonvrie… maybe?’

‘Doesn’t work. There were no warheads, and that fleet is too small for an invasion. The Pinnacle have ten of those hulking bastards. Had ten. They’d have sent six, and a lot more cruisers, and logistics vessels, transports for troops… No, those were there because they were expecting us. They dangled a big, juicy worm in front of me and they knew I’d have to take it and then… What the fuck happened to them?’

‘I don’t know. Something major. Something very coordinated. Meticulous.’ There was a pause; Aneka could almost hear Ella’s mind going over the possibilities. ‘I’d almost say… But that would be crazy.’

There were sounds, but nothing Aneka could identify. Ella thought the destruction looked like Aneka’s work; she was only dismissing it because it seemed so highly unlikely that Aneka could actually be there.

Then she heard Kade say, ‘I know a better way of making the ghosts go away. And I’m not drunk this time.’ Well, that explained the sounds.

Aneka cut the feed off from her own mind. ‘Let me know when they’re asleep. Keep an eye on the crew. When it goes quiet, we’ll go in.’

‘You’re disappointed in her?’

‘Not sure yet. I wouldn’t say no to Kade myself. I’m just not keen on Ella bedding a woman who seems to care more about her revenge on the Pinnacle than pretty much anything else.’

21.12.559 FSC.

There was no one on duty in the gun compartment. The weapon was powered down, dormant, and she ship was running on a minimal active complement. There was no need for anyone to be in the dark room, so there was no one to see Aneka slip out of her hiding place.

Her nanosuit was a belt around her waist now and she paused to strap her holster to her thigh before moving out. Her screens could provide concealment if she needed it, but Al was monitoring the corridor cameras and they were showing empty halls. The crew were sleeping, or in rooms and on duty. In the engineering section, a small, plump man was tinkering with some small gadget. Data feeds Al had tracked suggested that about half the crew were actually awake and watching porn. Well, there were relatively few women on the crew, so that was, perhaps, to be expected. The cat-girl was on duty on the bridge; Al had seen one other go in with her.

‘Gwy? Situation?’ Aneka asked.

‘We are in orbit at one of the Trojan points of the largest of the system’s gas giants, approximately three light seconds from the station. I am standing off at two thousand metres. Cassandra is worried.’

‘I’m not… worried as such,’ Cassandra’s voice cut in. ‘Concerned, perhaps. I think Ella may take all this badly, and I believe we have found at least one spy on Haven.’

‘Oh?’

‘We found an image which had been transmitted to the system’s main network. It contains embedded data which we cracked using one of the Pinnacle’s military encryption systems. It was little more than an acknowledgement of receipt of a report, but it seemed to indicate that someone informed the Pinnacle when the Hope left.’

‘Could you have found it without the stuff we stole from the Pinnacle?’

‘Found it? Yes. Decrypting it would have taken longer. Nothing Haven, or Kade herself, has access to could have broken it within an acceptable time frame.’

‘I’m shaky on the whole “acceptable time frame” thing…’

‘Several centuries.’

‘Okay… Just so you know, I’m going to be pretty shitty to Ella for a while. I need to find out where Kade’s loyalties lie.’

‘That’s fine,’ Cassandra said. ‘I think she deserves it.’

Letting herself grin, Aneka dropped down the access ladder to the lower floor and then followed the route Al had worked out from the security cameras to Kade’s cabin on the upper level.

‘Okay, cut all the comms in and out of the room, and unlock the door.’

‘The door,’ Al said, ‘is not locked. It appears that the locking systems all through the ship have been disabled centrally. They could be activated, but they do not automatically seal.’

‘Really? How… egalitarian, or something. When we get in, lock down all the doors in the midsection.’

The room was dimly lit, but Aneka’s eyes were the highest spec Winter had been able to fit into her body. Kade was lying on her back, sprawled out on a lot of cushions, which seemed to be her idea of furniture. Ella lay on her side, face buried in a cushion, nearby. Both of them were naked and Aneka suppressed a sudden burst of anger. This was not the same as Ian Devor.

Stepping smoothly across the room, Aneka stood over Kade, one foot between her spread legs, and aimed her pistol directly at the pirate’s face. ‘Al, turn the lights on.’ Light flooded the room.

Kade’s eyes flickered open. ‘What the fuck?’ Green eyes focussed on the wide barrel of the gun sticking in her face. ‘Oh shit!’

Ella stirred, turning onto her back and blinking as she tried to work out what was going on, eventually realised who was holding the gun… ‘Aneka!’

‘Oh yes,’ Aneka said, her gun remaining quite level. ‘“Oh shit, it’s Aneka.”’ For some reason, the irrational anger was back and it was not as hard as she had expected to act the outraged spouse.

‘But–’

‘First I hear you’ve been kidnapped. Then I hear you’ve been shagging Ian fucking Devor behind my back. Then I find out the people that grabbed you were probably Pinnacle. And when I finally track you down you’re shacked up with Pirate Queen Barbie here!’

‘Yes, but how are you here? How the Hell did you find me?’

Aneka barked out a mirthless laugh. ‘Oh, that was actually pretty damn easy. I’ve spent months developing contacts in the region. One of them put me on your track. If you’d stayed in Haven I’d have caught up with you days ago. Instead, I have to come here to save your sorry butt.’

‘You did–’ Kade began.

‘Yeah. You were wondering what happened to those ships and the station? Well, I happened to them. I killed five thousand, four hundred people so they didn’t kill you. Now you better explain to me why I bothered pretty fucking fast or I’m going to pull this barge apart with my bare hands!’

Part Six: The Death of Captain Kade

Hope of Sanctuary, 21.12.559 FSC.

‘Can I at least get dressed before you kill me?’ Kade asked.

‘I’m enjoying the view,’ Aneka replied, but she lifted her pistol and stepped back, turning away as she holstered her weapon.

‘What the Hell kind of gun is that anyway?’ Getting to her feet, the captain began collecting her clothes.

‘Now you’ve done it,’ Ella muttered as she followed suit.

‘This little beauty,’ Aneka said, patting her holster, ‘is Racine, a fifteen-millimetre, gravity pulse smart-gun with micro-replicator ammunition feed. She’s capable of firing twenty three-millimetre projectiles at roughly seventy per cent of light speed in one second, or a variety of situational combat rounds, including non-lethal projectiles and micro-missiles, at lower velocities, all selectable as required by the user. She features integral sighting through a multi-spectral, high-zoom imaging system and integrates fully with my internal targeting mechanisms. I came up with the concept, but it took a genius and two of the most intelligent AIs in the galaxy to actually make it work. Any questions?’

‘Uh… Yeah. Who the Hell are you, lady?’ Kade had managed to get her composure back, and with it came the anger.

‘Aneka Jansen, born third of March, nineteen-eighty-three. That’s a bit over twelve hundred years ago. I was kidnapped by the Xinti and turned into a robot, and then a Xinti AI gave me this body, which is far superior to either of the old ones and quite capable of ripping off your arms and legs so I can bludgeon the rest of you to death with them. So, aside from the fact that I didn’t want my cheating partner to die, why did I just kill a lot of people?’

Any answer she might have got was postponed by the banging on the door. ‘Boss?’ It was Lanyon’s voice. ‘Boss, are you okay? Someone heard shouting and all the doors have locked. Boss?’

‘Unlock it,’ Aneka said silently.

The door opened and the big man was left blinking at the scene in front of him. He put two and two together, got a fairly accurate answer and, letting out a roar of rage, charged.

‘Lanyon! No!’ Ella shrieked.

Aneka let him get a pace into the room before raising her left hand. The air rippled in front of it, and Lanyon gasped as the air was blasted out of his lungs and he was pushed back to the doorway. He staggered, blinked at them and then keeled over backwards. The door slid closed.

‘Lock it,’ Aneka instructed. Then, aloud, she said, ‘He’ll probably be fine once the shock wears off. You were saying, Barbie?’

‘Who’s Barbie?’ Kade asked.

‘She was a child’s doll,’ Ella mumbled. ‘She had… large breasts and an out-of-proportion figure. They made costumes for her.’

‘Hence “Pirate Queen Barbie,”’ Aneka explained. ‘I mean, seriously, have you looked at yourself in a mirror? Remind me to see if I’ve got Pirates of the Caribbean in the library as at least you’d be wearing slightly more authentic bad pirate costumes.’

Ella sighed. ‘Johnny Depp…’

‘I feel like I just walked in on a conversation I have no clue about,’ Kade growled. ‘You seem to know a fair bit about me. Surely you’ve figured out I’m trying to stop these bastards taking over the galaxy?’

‘Nope. I see a woman hell-bent on revenge for the loss of her people who’ll go to just about any lengths to destroy the Pinnacle, but that’s got nothing to do with stopping them. You want them gone, and you don’t really seem to care who gets hurt while you do it.’

‘That’s not true!’ Ella said. ‘She saved me. She’s saved a lot of people. She–’

‘Sells nuclear weapons to arms dealers who I know sell those on for use against civilians. Lives within a culture which idolises brigandry and is scared of every last pirate it busily idolises. And at the same time they’re enslaving captured Pinnacle women. For use in brothels.’

Ella shrank back, wrapping her arms around her chest and clutching her clothes to her breasts.

‘They–’ Kade began.

‘Is it true?’ Ella asked. Her voice was quiet, but there was so much hurt in it that Kade stopped.

‘Ella–’

‘Is it true?’

‘There are some…’ Kade trailed off as Ella closed her eyes.

‘The Pinnacle are assholes, but one of their core beliefs is their superiority over the other subspecies. They’ve internalised it. I could see it in their eyes while they were torturing me. They didn’t care, because I was little more than an animal. You’re taking women like that and making them into sex toys for people they’d probably think were beneath them anyway. As far as they are concerned, every day, dozens of animals come to fuck them, and they don’t have any choice but to accept it.’ Ella opened her eyes and looked at Kade. ‘And they’re right. They are being fucked by animals.’ She marched toward the door, screaming in frustration when it would not open. When it did, she pushed past Lanyon, who was standing there looking very uncertain, and hurried off down the corridor.

‘Track her,’ Aneka said.

‘I am following her,’ Al replied.

‘Well, that went better than expected,’ Aneka said aloud. ‘She hasn’t totally lost her sense of taste. You have space in your hangar bay for a hundred-tonne ship. I want to bring mine in and dock her.’

‘Are you… crazy?’ Kade asked.

‘It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s suggested I am, but I do need to talk to you about all this and what you’re going to do next, so I dock Gwy in your hangar, or we have to piss about with docking tubes.’

‘You don’t trust–’

‘There’s an implosion bomb attached to your reactor. If you try anything I’ll leave you stranded here for the Pinnacle to find when they turn up to investigate the station.’

‘I don’t recall us planting such a device,’ Al commented.

‘We didn’t. I wonder how much effort she’s going to spend trying to find it.’

‘Dock the ship,’ Kade growled at her.

‘Very reasonable of you, Captain.’ Turning on her heel, Aneka headed for the door. Lanyon stepped quickly aside as she approached, but she waved for him to follow her. ‘Come on, big guy, you’ve probably got broken ribs and I want you checked for internal injuries. We’ll have you back to fighting strength in no time.’

‘Uh…’ he started.

‘Move!’

‘Yes, ma’am!’

~~~

Ella lay on her bed with her eyes closed, trying not to think about anything. She had never really mastered it as a technique. In fact, she really sucked at it. Her mind tended to work at full speed all the time, and then it had been overclocked. When the door of her cabin opened, she knew exactly who it was without opening her eyes.

‘Fuck off, Ana.’

‘I just wanted a chance to explain.’ From the sound of it, the captain had stayed just outside the door, which was an improvement.

‘You lied to me, and you covered up how bad things are on Haven. You needed a pilot and… Or is it that you’re hoping to get Shadataga to side with you? Were you planning to use me for that too?’ There was a long enough pause that Ella knew she had at least considered it. ‘You know what? Get out. In a bit I’ll go and beg Aneka to take me back with her, and you can go fuck yourself.’

‘Okay, so I thought about it. And okay, so I maybe could have checked the dealers I was selling to better, but the slaves thing? That was in place before I ever got to Haven. I’ve never brought a woman back there from the Pinnacle. I hit military ships and bases. They don’t put women on those.’

‘Have you ever tried to stop it?’

‘Uh… no.’

‘You’re all just proving them right. Sure, they take slaves, so you have to go one better and make them do the most degrading thing they could possibly be forced into. I’m willing to bet they never sell arms to other species either. Go away, Ana. Let me get my self-recrimination over with so I can work on my begging.’

Gwy.

‘All right, strip.’ Aneka stood in the medical bay, which had not been there until Gwy had reconfigured the space, hand on her hip, and stared at Lanyon.

‘Uh…’

‘Are you going to undress, or do I have to knock you out and cut those britches off you?’

He had been acting a little oddly all the way to the hangar bay. It was as if he had had a shock to his self-esteem and was treating Aneka as the new alpha female. Now he regained a little of his former composure, crossing both sets of arms and lifting his chin. ‘Think you can? Without whatever it was you hit me with? Felt like a Pinnacle force pistol, but stronger.’

‘Same basic technology, different source.’ She stepped forward, placed her hands on his hips and lifted. There seemed to be no effort to it; she just lifted him off the deck and stood there, holding him. ‘Yes, I think I can knock you flat on your tight little arse.’ His eyes widened and she lowered him down again. ‘Now show me your tight little arse or I will.’

He was reaching for his belt before she had finished the sentence.

‘I did some research on his subspecies,’ Cassandra’s voice said into Aneka’s head. ‘There is quite a lot of data in the Pinnacle databases we took. Polymelians are strong, physical creatures and respond to strength. Demonstrating that you are physically superior will tend to make him more easily influenced.’

‘Huh. Well, he seemed the type, and he has gone rather submissive on me all of a sudden. I feel like I just got a new puppy.’

‘Let’s hope he’s housebroken.’

Aneka turned as Lanyon began pulling his boots off and glanced at the medical pod. It swung around from horizontal to a more vertical position and opened up. It was a bit over two metres in height, a metre across, which was going to be just about big enough to contain its patient. The interior was padded and the lid transparent.

‘Okay,’ Aneka said, ignoring the slight erection Lanyon was trying to cover up, ‘in you get. It’ll close and you’ll go to sleep. Shouldn’t be more than about ten minutes and it’ll fix up whatever damage I did to you.’

He looked down at the livid bruise which was starting to form across his lower rib cage and all across his stomach. ‘I don’t feel… particularly good,’ he admitted. Settling into the box, he rested his head back as the lid closed over him. A second later, his eyelids fluttered and then closed and the box began to fill with a bluish fluid.

‘Okay, fix him and run a full bioscan. I want to know if he’s using anything stronger than painkillers, and anything else you can find.’

‘Initiating cellular repairs now,’ Gwy responded.

‘Great. Cassandra? Would you mind vacating the cabin for a while? I think that Mister Lanyon might be an interesting source of information.’

‘Of course, but it’s unlikely he’ll trust you with anything we don’t already have.’

Aneka grinned and looked at the body now submerged in nanotech medical agent. ‘Oh, I think I know how to get him to talk to me.’

~~~

Ella straightened her top and waited for the inner door on the airlock to open. She had thought about wearing the grey dress but had decided that the pirate gear was better. She looked sexy in the pirate outfit and she was going to need all the help she could get to persuade Aneka not to be so angry anymore. A bit angry was pretty much to be expected, but… Anyway, at worst she was turning up and saying, ‘Look, I brought eye candy,’ which was something.

The door opened and Ella saw Gwy’s avatar standing on the other side. ‘Gwy! Uh… I’m happy to see you, but I wanted–’

‘I’m afraid Aneka is busy at the moment, Ella,’ Gwy said, smiling.

‘It won’t take long I just–’

‘She asked not to be disturbed.’

‘Yes, but–’

‘She is entertaining Mister Lanyon.’

‘O-oh. I… I guess I can come back… later.’

Gwy’s smile broadened as the door began to close. ‘I look forward to seeing you again, Ella.’

~~~

Aneka was smiling as she walked into the office space which Cassandra was currently occupying. ‘Anything interesting?’ the android asked. ‘Aside from multiple orgasms, obviously.’

‘What did the medical scans turn up?’

‘He’s suffered multiple bone breaks over his lifetime, some of them at a young age. The system corrected several faults in the bone structure while they were taking care of the bruising. You hadn’t done anything life-threatening to him, but he would have spent days recovering.’

‘There was no indication of drug use at all,’ Gwy put in. ‘I doubt he even takes much in the way of pain medication.’

Aneka nodded. ‘He basically thinks the sun shines out of Kade’s arse. He handles buying equipment more than the sales, but he’s been at several meetings where she’s been negotiating sales. I wouldn’t say she looks too hard at her buyers, but she does seem concerned about where the weapons are going. To be honest, he’s sort of a nice guy with a lousy history and he’s loyal. I get the feeling Kade inspired that in him rather than it being some sort of hero worship.’

‘So she may not be as bad as she seems?’ Cassandra asked.

‘Maybe. I hope not. I’m going to talk to the Felix. You said she was the XO, Al?’

Al’s avatar was sitting in the office’s second chair, quietly admiring his paramour in her simple, white tank dress. He stirred as Aneka spoke. ‘That seems to be the case, though she is referred to as the first mate.’

‘Very nautical. I’ll talk to her. Lanyon was going to relieve her on the bridge.’

‘I should mention that Ella was here earlier,’ Gwy said. ‘While you were “talking” with Mister Lanyon.’

‘Oh? How did she take it?’

‘She seemed… unsettled. She said she would return later.’

‘Right. With a bit of luck it’ll be while I’m talking to Trin.’

Hope of Sanctuary.

Trin raised an eyebrow at the tall, white-haired woman standing in her cabin doorway, but she stepped aside and waved Aneka in before heading for her drinks cabinet.

‘So you’re this Aneka that Ella was talking about? Want a drink? I need one.’

‘Is that rum?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘No thanks. It tastes like paint thinner and the alcohol does nothing to me.’

Trin poured a glass, raised it to Aneka, emptied it and poured another. ‘Nothing at all?’

Aneka watched as the girl sprawled out on some cushions on the floor. ‘This body is synthetic. I’m pretty much a robot. My mind is an emulation running on a computer in here. I can eat and drink, but I only bother for the taste.’

‘That is some very fine craftsmanship,’ Trin replied, grinning. ‘You didn’t come here to discuss rum, or feminine aesthetics.’

Aneka settled onto the cushions near the cat-girl. ‘No, I came to discuss your captain.’

‘Direct, forthright, I like it, but do you really think I’m going to spill my guts just because you walk in and ask?’

‘I think that you’re the first mate and Kade trusts you, so you’re aware that she’s hoping Ella can be a vehicle to get Shadataga in on this fight of yours.’

‘She… may have mentioned–’

‘Well, now I’m here and you’re going to have to convince me. Speaker is going to view this as outside their remit. War might be able to persuade him that striking at the Pinnacle now will prevent greater loss of life later. He’s the social scientist, and she’s the strategist.’

Trin sipped her rum and stared at Aneka with unblinking, amber eyes. ‘So you simply want me to justify what we do to you so you’ll decide we’re worthy of your assistance.’

‘Something like that.’

‘You’re not worth it.’

Aneka laughed. ‘Good answer. Explain it to me.’

‘That’s the point, I can’t. If you can’t see that the Pinnacle are a threat to your very existence, given time–’

‘But that’s just it, they aren’t. Even if they manage to push their technology to the next generation, we could still wipe them out with no difficulty at all. We can blow up suns. On my own I wiped out eight cruisers and a heavy battleship, and then I killed every man on one of their stations. Imagine what our warships are like.’

‘But you won’t use them. You’ll hang back and wait. You want peace, am I correct? People who want peace do not make war.’

‘That’s pretty much what the last man who decided to take over the galaxy said. The AIs are logical. They’re emotionally invested in ensuring peace, and they’re quite willing to take drastic measures to make sure they get it. The Collective isn’t perfect. It has people in it for one thing, and people can be arseholes. But they know that if they start a war, Shadataga will pull their tech out from under them, and if they try anything big, they won’t live long enough to know they fucked up.’

Trin’s eyes narrowed and she sipped more rum. Her tail curled, finding Aneka’s thigh and sliding over it. Aneka ignored it because it seemed like the tail’s owner was concentrating and the tail was doing its own thing.

‘I grew up on Taeonvrie,’ Trin said eventually. ‘It’s a neighbour of Iyonvrie, a nice place, but complacent. It has good tech, better than this ship, and that includes a device which they created to end the threat of nuclear war.’

‘Damper technology. I know the kind of thing. It’s useless against antimatter warheads, or antimatter-catalysed fusion bombs.’

‘Yes. I am here because I want to keep my home world safe. No one has ever thanked me for it, but there you are. I don’t think we can sit there behind our defence ships and the damper screens while the Pinnacle work out how to defeat us. I can’t speak for everyone. Ana is out for revenge as much as anything and Lanyon would follow her into Hell. No one on this ship is in it for the money, though that helps. My tail thinks that your skin feels too real to be synthetic. If I were to take one of my knives–’

‘You’d find the layer of monocrystal armour under the skin, and then I’d break your arm.’

Trin’s lips curled into a grin. ‘You are quite amazing, and my tail likes you.’

Aneka glanced down at the tail which was now stroking over her hip. ‘I quite like your tail. Tell me about Kade.’

Gwy.

Ella licked her lips, straightened her shirt and waited for the inner door of the airlock to open. Lanyon was on duty on the bridge, so Aneka was not with him, so all she had to do was wait for the door to open and she could talk to Aneka and everything would be okay. When it did open, it revealed Gwy’s smiling face and Ella’s heart sank.

‘Hello again, Ella,’ Gwy said.

‘I’m here to see–’

‘Aneka is not aboard. She has gone to see the Felix, Miss Trin. She has been gone for over thirty minutes.’

‘She’s with Trin?’

‘Yes, Ella.’

‘And she was with Lanyon?’

‘Yes, Ella.’

‘O-oh…’ Ella’s lips tightened. ‘Right. I’ll be back in five minutes.’

‘I am not sure that Aneka will be back by then.’

‘I’m hoping she won’t be.’

~~~

The meeting with Trin had been interesting, and something to think about. Aneka was starting to conclude that Kade might be worth the effort, but there was one last thing she needed to know before deciding and that was going to be hard. Having Ella on-side would be good for that. The cute little redhead had been with the pirates for weeks now and she was bound to have useful insights if she could be trusted to get her face out from between Kade’s legs.

Walking into the cabin, Aneka concluded that Ella had, in fact, returned to the ship during Aneka’s trip to Trin’s cabin. She also concluded that Ella was fairly willing to do anything to get back into Aneka’s good books, and that she was not too attached to the captain.

Ella was hanging on the wall from some sort of metal cuffs which had to use magnets to cling to the metal in the walls. The strain was showing in Ella’s arms, but she was coping. Her whole body weight was hanging from her wrists since she had also managed to cuff her ankles to the wall, a good metre and a half apart. She had been taking lessons from her mother for quite a while, but getting herself splayed out like that still had to have taken quite an effort. The stretching involved was making her back arch and pushing her chest out.

The sight of Ella’s naked, vulnerable body sent a little thrill through Aneka. On an intellectual level, she knew it was not real; her synthetic body reacted to the functions of her mind within its cybernetic shell, not to any physical stimuli. Another intellectual point was that Ella had cheated on her. That really did not matter: Ella was offering herself up to be used as Aneka wished, or ignored. Aneka ignored her, unstrapping her holster from her thigh and acting as though she had not even noticed Ella hanging there.

It was when she turned her back and walked over to a cabinet near the bed that Ella spoke. Her voice was timid, uncertain. ‘Aneka?’

Aneka said nothing, but she turned back after a few seconds and walked over to where Ella was suspended. She moved in close and Ella let out a gasp as a thin, metallic probe slid into her and she felt cool metal against her labia. A sensation she had not felt in a while, a slight tingling followed by a growing warmth, began. The last thing Ella heard before the neurostim turned her mind into a sea of incoherent pleasure was Aneka’s voice whispering, ‘I’m going to make you scream so hard you wake the neighbours in the next system.’

~~~

Aneka held Ella against her as hot water streamed down onto them. The little redhead, her little redhead, was still trembling and she hung limply in Aneka’s arms for several minutes letting the water soak into her hair.

‘I’m sorry,’ Ella whispered.

‘So am I.’

‘What… what’ve you got to be sorry for? Except maybe for breaking me.’

‘I should have said something about Devor. He wasn’t important and it never came up, and… I should have said something.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘He tried to get me into bed for about two months before he got to you. I knew exactly why he was doing it. He thought he could get a leg up on his career. As well as a leg over, of course.’

‘So when he came on to me… Damn, I gave him just what he wanted. Or was he trying to get back at you for rejecting him?’

‘Don’t know. But if I’d said something we probably wouldn’t have ended up like this, so it’s my fault as well.’

Ella managed a giggle. ‘Actually, I quite like how we’ve ended up, even if my legs still won’t work. Anyway, maybe we needed a bit of a kick. I had a lot of time to think about us when I was locked up in Pinnacle cells. We’ve been–’

‘Taking each other for granted. I know. I had time to think about it too. Still… Ian Devor? I mean, I almost can’t forgive you for that. Almost anyone else, but him?’

‘I know. I’d broken up with him before the Pinnacle killed him, and he was constantly at me to start up again. Everyone’s judgement lapses now and then? So… how were Lanyon and Trin?’

‘Lanyon was a little naïve, very enthusiastic, and he acted just the way I expected, which means he started talking to keep me from going again after the second time round. Men do that when faced with insatiable women.’

‘Oh.’

‘And I didn’t sleep with Trin. We just talked. I think her tail wanted in, but she was being strict with it.’

‘Oh… So you were gathering information, not actually rubbing my nose in it?’

Aneka chuckled softly. ‘I admit to a little nose rubbing. Worked, didn’t it?’

‘I’d hit you, but I don’t think you’d notice. Did you have to make me come quite so many times?’

‘Yes. And when you’ve eaten and recovered, I’m going to do it again. I’m not going to take you for granted ever again.’

Ella whimpered. ‘You can take me a little bit for granted,’ she said in her smallest voice.

22.12.559 FSC.

‘Wasn’t this the medical bay?’ Lanyon asked as he peered around the briefing room with its long table and ten chairs.

‘Reconfigurable space,’ Aneka replied. ‘Gwy’s a little too small to have all the rooms we need, and the AIs haven’t quite figured out pocket dimensions or dimensional transcendence yet.’

‘Uh… right.’

Aneka sighed. ‘Doctor Who references are just wasted on some people.’

‘Lovely though this is,’ Kade said, nodding to the image of Gwy occupying one of the walls, ‘why are we here?’

‘I have to concur with my captain,’ Trin put in.

‘Okay,’ Aneka said, nodding, ‘how did the Pinnacle know you were coming? How did they know when you were coming?’

‘They set a trap and waited–’ Kade began.

‘They knew within a day when you were arriving.’

Gwy turned slightly and a system map appeared beside her, markers showing the positions of the station and the wrecks of the ships. ‘You have seen where the vessels are located. They know you have cloaking technology and yet they stand out in the open where you can see them. When you arrived, you would recognise the trap and leave before they could open fire.’

‘Their battle plan,’ Aneka continued, ‘was to post themselves in the shadow of asteroids and let you in to attack the station. They planted a tracking device on Ella before she even got to Ariadne which would then be activated, and then they’d have a target and you’d be dust before you realised what was happening. We took the tracker out last night.’

Kade frowned, but it was Trin who spoke. ‘It makes sense, Boss. How they knew we’d pick Ella up–’

‘They’ve been studying you for a long time. They have some pretty thorough psychological profiles, and they made damn sure Ella would end up right in your path. A bit of luck was involved, but more planning.’

‘Okay, so how did they know about the timing?’

‘We found this in the traffic we harvested from Haven,’ Cassandra said, indicating a section of wall which was now displaying an image. Everyone looked at the image.

‘Well okay,’ Trin said, ‘she’s not bad looking and she has great breasts, but I can do that?’

Lanyon, his cheeks colouring, looked at her. ‘You can?’

‘I don’t plan on demonstrating. Why are we looking at Felix porn?’

‘Because the file is fifty-two per cent larger than it needs to be for the image data it displays,’ Cassandra explained. ‘The encapsulated data file was encrypted using a Pinnacle military-grade cypher system which we were only able to decrypt using software we took from a communications and computer facility on Ranson.’ The image was replaced by a text file display, which seemed to relieve Lanyon somewhat. ‘This was the reply to a message sent out by someone on Haven. It confirms receipt of your departure time.’

‘That’s impossible,’ Kade said.

Aneka watched her, analysis software capturing every tiny expression as it worked its way across the captain’s features. Disbelief, horror, the glimmer of a thought which might mean this was somehow wrong…

‘If they have a spy on Haven,’ Kade continued, ‘they would have destroyed us long ago.’

‘Not if they want you gone, but Haven right where it is,’ Ella said.

‘Haven is the resistance against them! The one place every one of their slaves knows they can go to if they escape. The–’

‘That’s precisely the point,’ Ella broke in. ‘It gives all their subjects hope. It’s the one tiny glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Without it, all those slaves, billions of them, would have nothing to lose.’

‘People with nothing to lose have a power no one else can match,’ Aneka said. ‘I’ve seen it. When there’s no hope of really winning, a man will strap ten pounds of plastic explosives to his chest and run into a bar full of soldiers. He’ll give his life to kill that one general no one could possibly get to. She’ll die trying to kill the man who ordered her brother to his death.’

‘Haven gives them hope,’ Ella went on. ‘Hope of sanctuary, if you like. And the pirates there, except for you, prey on more ships outside Pinnacle space than in. You are the one they need to get rid of. People idolise you more than anyone else. You attack Pinnacle vessels and stations. You actually succeed in freeing their slaves and prisoners. They wipe out the Hope and kill Captain Kade, and the others will never try anything as bold as you, ever again.’

‘But now they’ve failed,’ Aneka stated, ‘and you’re still alive. So what happens next, Captain Kade?’

Silence fell across the room. Gwy’s crew waited for an answer, and Trin and Lanyon looked to Kade. The captain sat with her head bowed, her hair forming a curtain over her face.

‘They’ll come looking for me in Haven,’ she said softly. ‘It may be useful for them, but they won’t want it becoming a real rallying point. They’ll send in their fleet and wipe everyone out. We can’t go back.’

‘Boss,’ Trin said warily, ‘we have people with families on Haven…’

‘I know. We’ll… go to Oberian. Anyone who wants to can leave then, head back on a trader. After that…’

‘Without a base to operate from,’ Lanyon said, ‘we’ll be hard-pressed to keep supplied.’

‘We can’t go back to Haven,’ Kade stated firmly, raising her head finally. ‘It is the one hope of refuge people have, even if it’s a false hope. I want the Pinnacle to pay for what they did to… But not at the cost of everyone in that system.’

‘Glad to hear it,’ Aneka said. Ella was grinning brightly: she had not been entirely sure how Kade would respond. ‘So I was thinking of something a little more drastic and a little more likely to result in the Pinnacle getting knocked back a step or three.’

Kade’s eyes narrowed. ‘What exactly do you have in mind?’

‘Well, the first thing we’re going to have to do is kill Captain Anastasia Kade.’

25.12.559 FSC.

‘Ella?’ Aneka called out as she walked into their cabin. ‘Gwy said you needed me in here.’ She stopped as she saw Ella, standing beside the bed. ‘Okay…’

The pretty redhead was naked, aside from some ribbons. There was one around her hips, another around her breasts, a third tying her hands behind her back, and the last one covered her mouth. She was looking a little sheepish, but she was waiting patiently for Aneka to free her, so Aneka walked over and carefully undid the bow over her lips.

‘Happy Christmas,’ Ella said, grinning.

‘It’s… I guess it is. Totally slipped my mind. We haven’t really done anything for a few years.’ She leaned forward and their lips met, teasingly at first and then more fiercely.

‘We’ve been busy,’ Ella replied when they finally broke the kiss. ‘And now we’re going to take the time for a bit of Christmas, even if we have to steal it away from the busy. Come on, unwrap your presents.’

Smirking, Aneka tugged on the bow over her partner’s breasts. ‘Cassandra did these for you?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Thought so. That woman does such neat bows.’ Aneka’s hands cupped Ella’s breasts, sliding over the skin. Her thumbs shifted up and began teasing at nipples which stiffened rapidly. Ella let out a little moan, her eyelids fluttering. Bending forward, Aneka sucked a nipple in, flicking it with her tongue, and this time the moan was louder. Finding the lower bow by touch, Aneka pulled it free, letting the red ribbon pool at Ella’s feet. A finger slid between labia which were already wet from anticipation and found the little nub there. She began a gentle rotation over it.

‘You… you haven’t unwrapped… me properly,’ Ella panted.

‘The rule in my house was that you have to play with each toy you get before you unwrap the next one.’

‘O-oh… right.’

Aneka slid to her knees. ‘So I’m going to play with this one for a couple of hours before I do that last one. This one looks like so much fun.’ She leaned forward, replacing finger with tongue and then sliding two fingers up to find the spot which always made Ella squirm so much.

‘Oh… Vashma.’

Pirate Cove, Haven, 4.1.560 FSC.

‘Anastasia Kade was the best captain there was,’ Trin said. She was standing beside a glass-topped, metal coffin which was resting on a table in Nightside. Inside it was the woman she was talking about, laid out in her pirate costume, her sword beside her. She looked peaceful. ‘She fought the Pinnacle with a ferocity no one could match. She took us to new heights. She was my friend. Captain Kade!’

There was a chorus of responses from all of those gathered in the bar to see Kade off. Trin raised her glass to the coffin and then emptied it.

‘The crew have taken a vote,’ Trin went on. ‘Without Ana… It just won’t be the same. Some of us will be joining other crews, if there’s space for us. Some of us will find something else to do with our time. The Hope is too badly damaged to be salvageable. We were lucky to get home. She’ll sit as a memorial to her captain.’ She looked down at the coffin again, frowned and then said, ‘Let’s get this done.’

Eight men, including Lanyon, carried Kade’s coffin through the streets and then to the hangar bay where it was loaded into a gutted missile which Cubby had prepared, jury-rigged to follow a pre-defined course. The crew of the Hope and as many other Haven citizens as they could gather in the observation decks stood and watched as the tiny spaceship powered out of the bay and off into deep space.

Gwy.

The hatch of the medical pod lifted smoothly and Anastasia Kade struggled into a sitting position, accepting a bottle of isotonic water from Ella with a grateful smile. ‘Did they buy it?’

‘I have intercepted an outgoing transmission using Pinnacle encryption,’ Gwy said from the room’s speakers. ‘It contained a full report of the Hope’s return, your funeral, and details from a medical scan performed to confirm you were dead.’

‘Welcome to the afterlife,’ Aneka said. ‘We don’t have any houris, but Ella’s a pretty good approximation.’

‘I have no idea what that means,’ Kade replied, ‘but thanks. What’s next?’

‘Oh… Now we get to the hard part.’

Part Seven: Hope

Gwy, Haven System, 4.11.560 FSC.

‘All right,’ Aneka said as she settled onto a corner of the bed, ‘I’ve sent off the message to the listening post at Oberian. It will relay it to Shadataga via Old Earth, but we’re probably talking about three to four days before we get any reply.’

‘And we don’t know what that response will be,’ Kade stated. She was looking around the cabin as though wondering where to sit.

‘No, but I think it’ll be positive.’

‘But we don’t know so… So we just hang around out here in space and monitor communications traffic?’

‘You do. Ella and I will do some preparatory work.’

‘We’ve identified one spy, probably,’ Ella said. ‘She’s not Pinnacle, so we need to know why she’s doing it and whether there are others.’

‘They seem to organise themselves into cells,’ Aneka continued, ‘so if there is more than one, we should be able to work out who they are if we spend our time constructively. But that can wait until tomorrow when things have calmed down a little over there.’

As she finished, Al walked in carrying a tray upon which were glasses and a couple of bottles of dark-golden liquid. ‘We thought we should celebrate Captain Kade’s resurrection,’ he said, a smile playing over his lips.

‘What with?’ Kade asked. ‘I don’t recognise–’

‘It’s rum,’ Aneka said. ‘Real rum, not that detergent you make. Well, as real as Gwy could approximate from my memories of it.’

‘The synthesis was quite complex,’ Gwy said, appearing in one of the walls. ‘I hope it meets requirements.’

Aneka looked over at the obsidian figure. ‘As long as it doesn’t taste like it’s stripping the inside off my digestive processor, I think you’ll be on to a winner.’

~~~

‘Thish shtuff is pretty good,’ Kade said, swigging back the remains of her glass and then giggling. ‘I think I’m a bit drunk.’

Aneka watched her with a faint smile on her face. ‘You have a bit of an alcohol problem.’

‘I know. I keep finding empty bottles.’ There was more giggling and then a sudden burst of sobriety. ‘I don’t let it affect my work, and I don’t get slammed every night, but I know I drink too much. Wouldn’ve shlept with Ella that firsht time. Not proper. Washn’t right.’

‘Ella’s views on casual sex aren’t exactly like most people in this neighbourhood, are they, love?’

‘No. Probably not,’ Ella admitted. ‘Jenlay are pretty open about their sexuality, and I’m more open than most.’

‘But she’s married,’ Kade countered. ‘To you.’

‘That’s never stopped us,’ Aneka replied. ‘I was pissed off at her about Devor, but that was because she kept it secret. That and because it was Ian Devor. No, I expected her to have slept with you and Trin by the time I caught up with her.’

‘You did?’ Ella said.

‘Of course. Trin first, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Always did like the exotic, and Ana here is too much like me. I’m just surprised you never got around to Lanyon.’

Ella sighed. ‘I’d have got to him eventually. How was he?’

‘Big. And his hands get everywhere.’

‘Well, yeah… How could they not?’

Pirate Cove, 5.1.560 FSC.

Aneka and Ella sat in the shadow of a booth at the back of Nightside, watching the bar. They had been there for the last couple of hours, nursing some of the local rum. They watched people coming and going, but they watched one person most closely, and they had made sure they were in place before she arrived.

‘I can’t believe she’s the spy,’ Ella said, her voice transmitted to Aneka via her implant.

‘It’s a perfect cover. She sees everyone coming and going. She overhears things. People talk in front of bar staff. And Gwy’s quite sure the encrypted messages came from the computer in her apartment.’

‘Yes, but… I don’t see her as capable of that kind of duplicity.’

‘You’re sure you’re not just painting her in a good light because you slept with her?’

‘No, I’m not sure. But you slept with her too. What do you think?’

Aneka frowned, watching as Naseena poured drinks and chatted to her customer. ‘I think there’s more to this than meets the eye. I think if she’s exposed, she’s dead. I doubt she’s alone.’

‘So we talk to her?’

‘You talk to her. Get yourself invited back to her place. I’m going to break in and set Al loose on her computer. When you get back, we should be ready to deal with her.’

‘It will be six or seven hours before her shift ends,’ Al put in.

‘Yeah… We’ll head out and you can come back later, Ella. I want to take another look at the brothel in Elysium Falls.’

~~~

‘I’m glad I didn’t come over here,’ Ella said as they entered the lounge, ‘even if it did mean I missed the problems. This place gives seedy a good name.’

‘Yeah, but there was something I missed,’ Aneka replied, taking a seat at the bar. She gave the man behind it a glower and said, ‘Two whiskies. The good stuff, not that piss you serve normally.’ The man looked at her for a fraction of a second and then hurried to the back, bending down to retrieve a bottle from a low cupboard.

‘How did you know they had better whiskey somewhere?’ Ella asked.

‘They always have something better hidden away, and asking for it makes it sound like we know the place.’

‘You know, I’m supposed to be the psychologist.’

‘I’ve probably been in more crappy bars. Actually, I think this place fits “bordello” really well. Anyway, there was something about this place. One of the girls… Her.’

Ella turned her head absently as a marker appeared in-vision, indicating a woman walking in from one of the back rooms. She was tall, attractive, well-built, and naked aside from the silver collar framing her neck. Ella’s fists tightened at the sight of the metalwork, but she focussed on the woman, watching her move. Aneka was right: there was something…

‘She’s not quite like the others. Her posture is better. She looks less beaten. She doesn’t look happy, but she’s… She hasn’t been broken by what she’s being made to do.’

‘I’m glad it’s not just me seeing things.’ Aneka tossed some coins onto the counter and picked up her glass, sipping from it. ‘Not bad. You know, we could bankrupt this place by bringing in some fresh coinage. There’s more gold in my fillings than there is in the local money.’

‘You don’t have any fillings. Your teeth are perfect.’

‘Precisely my point. Anyway, that woman intrigues me. She’s here with a purpose and somehow being forced into prostitution serves it.’

‘There is something else,’ Al said. ‘Those collars give off a regular registration pulse to the control units indicating that they are functioning and giving the slave’s position. Hers is transmitting far more data. It appears to be acting as a network interconnect node. A neural induction interface allowing her to connect to a computer seems most likely.’

‘Can you track the server down?’

‘Not from here. It is interfacing via the local wireless network. The machine could be anywhere. I can make an educated guess, however.’

‘Where?’

‘It seems likely that she will be monitoring communications in and out of Haven. All of it passes through here since this station has the largest communications array. Were I her, I would have my monitoring tool as close as possible to the array.’

‘All right, we’ll hunt that down after we’ve sounded out Naseena. I want to be able to take this one off the grid if we have to. Maybe we could even feed her false information, but we’ll work that out when the time comes.’

‘It’s all on Naseena then?’ Ella asked.

‘She’s where we start.’

‘I think it’d be useful to know how she got here.’

~~~

Trin lay on her cushions and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds. ‘Naseena. Naseena is your spy?’

‘That’s how it looks,’ Aneka said, ‘and no one else gets to hear about it for now, okay?’

‘If we’re going to use her, then yes. I can introduce her to one of my knives when this is done.’

‘We’ll see. Ella wants to know how she ended up on Haven.’

Trin glanced at Ella, who was currently busy fending off Trin’s tail. ‘We brought her in. We found her on a Pinnacle slave transport along with a hundred others. Damn… We never thought they’d use anyone but their own.’

‘You thought they didn’t know where Haven was,’ Aneka pointed out.

‘That’s true. Naïve as it sounds, it’s true.’

Ella gave up with the tail and left it to play in her cleavage. ‘So she came back to Haven. Then what?’

‘She got the job at Nightside pretty quickly. Supposedly the Pinnacle had picked her up on a planetary raid. She’d been working in a bar before that. This would be… two years ago? Give or take anyway. Nothing’s changed since that time. There hasn’t been any indication that they knew more about us.’

‘Oh, I think she’s just the latest in a line of spies,’ Aneka said.

‘They’ve probably had people here since before the Hope arrived,’ Ella added.

‘Some resistance movement we are,’ Trin grumbled. ‘We never had a clue.’

Ella shrugged. ‘They tipped their hand when they flagged you leaving here, and then they didn’t expect anyone to find out, or you to survive. Don’t kick yourself over it.’ She grinned. ‘Your tail isn’t.’

‘Huh. Damn tail’s a harlot, doesn’t care about spies unless they’re spies with spread legs.’

‘Oddly,’ Aneka replied, ‘that’s exactly what we’re going after.’

~~~

Ella was giggling as she preceded Naseena into the girl’s little apartment. She stumbled a little as she walked, giggled more and then threw herself onto the bed.

‘Better lie down before I fall down,’ she said. ‘Saves some time anyway.’

Naseena joined in the giggling as she began undoing her dress. ‘I don’t think we should waste any time. I remember the last time and I want to make sure I get plenty more.’ Her dress pooled around her feet and she cocked her hip, standing there in just a thong. ‘Get your clothes off.’

‘I think,’ Aneka said from behind her, ‘that Ella can stay just as she is.’

Letting out a squeak, Naseena turned, seeing first Aneka and then the huge bulk of Racine. ‘What…? What do you want? I’ve no money to–’

Pushing the pistol into the girl’s stomach, Aneka forced her back towards the bed. Ella, suddenly not seeming the least bit drunk, grabbed her wrists and pulled her down, holding her arms behind her back. The barmaid was trembling.

‘It’s like this,’ Aneka said. ‘We know you’re spying for the Pinnacle. Currently we’re the only ones who do. You get this one chance to explain why you’re doing it before we decide to broadcast it on the local news channels.’

‘Oh shit,’ Naseena breathed.

‘Not a particularly satisfying explanation. What do you think, Ella?’

‘I think she could definitely do better.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘They… They took me in a raid,’ Naseena began.

‘We’re aware of that.’

‘Yeah, but what you don’t know is that they already knew all about Haven. They had spies here already, but they’d lost one somehow. They never explained what happened, but they needed a replacement. They said… They gave me a choice. It was a mining colony or I come here and work for them. Do you know what the life expectancy is of a slave in one of those places? They explained the odds. They said if I made my next birthday I’d be lucky. They–’

‘Conned you,’ Ella interrupted.

‘What?’

‘It’s not a viable way to run a mine. They have high enough tech that they can do a far more efficient job of ore extraction without slaves in the mix. I grew up in a mining colony and the actual requirement for people was largely supervisory. And that was with less automation than they’ll have. The Pinnacle wouldn’t waste their time with people wielding pickaxes, and if the life expectancy is so short, they’d have denuded the population of every world between here and Old Earth by now. I spent time as a house slave. I was treated pretty well and I didn’t see anyone conspicuously abused.’

‘But everyone’s heard of the Pinnacle mining camps! Everyone knows someone who–’

‘Knows someone who had a friend’s sister’s nephew die there?’ Aneka suggested. ‘How do you know about these camps? Ever met someone who’s actually been in one?’

‘I… No. Rumours and stories.’

‘Another control mechanism,’ Ella said. ‘I have to hand it to them, they’re clever and they know their psychology. They’ve got Haven so that people think there are people fighting for them, and they have these mining camps to keep them in line… I’m starting to wonder who actually started Haven.’

Aneka nodded. ‘So, Naseena, you chose life, even some freedom. All the messages we’ve intercepted have come through your personal computer. You say there are other spies?’

‘Four. Well, four I know of, plus Lenora. She’s–’

‘Your handler, the girl in the brothel with the fake collar.’

Naseena’s eyes widened. ‘You really have been watching us, but there’s one other. I’m not sure who that is. They don’t send reports out through my system. I know the Pinnacle cross-check everything we send to make sure we’re still working for them. Lenora’s the only one who gets orders from outside. A-as far as I know.’

Aneka slid her pistol back into its holster, pursing her lips, and Ella let go of Naseena’s arms. The barmaid rubbed at her wrists but remained where she was. She looked uncertain and vulnerable, and she waited silently for whatever judgement which might be about to befall her.

‘The unknown is the problem,’ Aneka finally said. ‘We can get around Lenora, and the others all route through your computer, so if they won’t play ball we can just silence them, but this unknown…’

‘P-play ball?’ Naseena asked.

‘We have a plan, but to make it work the Pinnacle are going to have to think everything here is normal, even when it stops being. So you and your friends are going to feed them information indicating that it’s all business as usual. The problem is that we don’t know one of the players.’

‘Th-this plan? What do we get out of it?’

‘Real freedom.’

Naseena pulled herself up straight. ‘For that you can take my kidneys. I’m in, and the others will “play ball” as well. Lenora… I’m not sure about her. She’s not entirely here by choice either. I’m not entirely sure what she did, but something she said once… She said this was her penance. And then she made some threat about having me spaced if I screwed it up for her, but the way she said it… I don’t think she really thinks she’s ever going to leave.’

Aneka shrugged. ‘We’ll need to have a little talk with her anyway. What can you tell us about our outsider?’

‘Not much. He’s got access to communications. He might not be a he, but he must be someone important. He seems to be able to go anywhere he likes.’

‘It’s something to work with. We’re leaving now. You’ll be watched, and we’re monitoring all communications in the system. If you warn the Pinnacle, I’ll make sure you’re still alive and in pain when they show up to turn this system into gravel.’

Naseena gave a nod. ‘That’s fair, but I won’t.’ She seemed quite clear on the matter, and there was something a little different about her: there was a new determination in her eyes, a glimmer of hope which had not been there before.

Gwy.

‘Give us the summary, Gwy,’ Aneka said as she walked into the cabin with Ella.

‘I have only had thirty minutes to work on the module you found, Aneka,’ Gwy replied as her image appeared in the wall.

‘Yes, but you’re a gorgeous, super-fast, hyper-intelligent computer and the best ship in the galaxy–’

‘Second best.’

‘Only if you haven’t already discovered the name of this mysterious agent.’

Gwy’s image grinned. ‘Case proven then. However, I do not believe that information is stored within Lenora’s system. She may know, but if she does, it is not recorded. I found detailed information on all the other spies, but the only things suggesting a further one are in the form of messages stating that information has been cross-checked.’

‘Do you think this could be another control?’ Ella asked. ‘Something to keep their people here in check. “We have someone you know nothing about and we check everything you say against his reports.”’

‘We can’t afford to make the assumption,’ Kade said. She was sitting at the room’s desk, examining data on a screen. ‘If we can’t identify them, then we may have to risk it, but we need to try everything to find them first. You say this thing was integrated right into the main comms hub?’

‘Too integrated,’ Aneka replied. ‘It had to have been built in during construction.’

The pirate sagged. ‘Pirate Cove was one of the first asteroids to be converted.’

‘Ella was wondering whether the Pinnacle actually set this place up.’

‘Yeah… that was the conclusion I was coming to. There are records in here going back centuries. Maybe they didn’t exactly start the colony here, but they were in right from the start making sure it would never become a real threat.’

‘Well, there’s no point in worrying over that now,’ Ella said. ‘We need to find this missing agent. Who would have the kind of access Naseena mentioned, and communications equipment?’

‘Communications equipment which I am unable to monitor,’ Gwy put in. ‘All the encrypted messages I have discovered have come through Naseena’s system.’

‘I should have thought that was obvious,’ Cassandra stated, her gaze turning to Kade.

The platinum blonde looked up, frowning. ‘What? I’d never–’

‘No,’ Aneka said, ‘but she’s right. It pretty much has to be one of the other captains.’

‘Shit. It makes a horrible sense too. Some ships have been taken out by Pinnacle ambushes and… It always seemed like they were the more careful ones, and the ones who hit the most Pinnacle transports. I was always careful about information. No one was supposed to know about the last target until we were in flight. I worked the same way on every big target. The others were never so security conscious.’

‘The attack on station two-oh-six,’ Ella said. ‘You had to come back here to get the last details you needed?’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’

‘So who provided them?’

Pirate Cove, 6.1.560 FSC.

Thorder Dron was a short, stocky man, balding with grey in what hair he had left. He had, according to Kade, been trading between Oberian and Haven for over a century, and she was quite sure of his integrity, within certain bounds. He did not like the Pinnacle one little bit, but he also hated to charge a fair price for anything when he could get away with overcharging. Aside from that, she trusted him.

Aneka was not quite so trusting, but willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Unfortunately, he did not know Aneka from Adam. ‘Border station two-oh-six? No idea what you’re talking about.’

Sighing, Aneka looked across his desk at him, her software picking out the micro-expressions which gave away nervousness, defensiveness, and the fact that he was lying. ‘I know you gave her the information, because she told Trin, and Trin told me. We think she was set up. We want to know who did it so we can remove their internal organs systematically, and very slowly.’

‘You don’t think–’ Now there was outrage beginning.

‘Trin says you’re trustworthy. Of course, they sent me to talk to you and I’m basically a hired killer, so…’

‘I gave her good intel! It cost me too, but someone has to stop those bastards from taking over the galaxy. I might not be up to fighting now, but I can help where I can.’

‘Okay, so where did you get the information?’

Dron’s cheeks coloured. ‘Uh, there’s a girl in the brothel near Nightside…’

‘I somehow knew we would end up there,’ Al commented.

‘I figured it would be the cheap one in Elysium Falls,’ Aneka replied.

~~~

Except that the prostitute had got the information from pillow talk. She had been quite keen to explain because it made her feel like a secret agent. She was sure that the man who had told her had no idea that she would pass it on…

But he had, in fact, passed the information on to several people he had been told would probably get it to the right ear. He had been told about it by a man who worked in the hangar bay and neither of them wanted the information traced back to them in case the Pinnacle ever found out, but the technician was not the actual source either.

‘How did this ever work?’ Al asked as Aneka stalked through Elysium Falls in search of the next link in the chain. ‘Aside from the sheer improbability of this eventually getting where it was supposed to, the potential for distortion seems far too high.’

‘I’m guessing, but I figure we’re following the chain that worked. They probably sent the same message out through multiple routes. The only person willing to actually attack a border station is Kade, even with the kind of loot on offer that they were baiting the trap with. We could check up with Kade and see whether she got the initial information from Dron. I suspect she didn’t. She probably has a fair few people keeping an ear out for interesting bits of information on the Pinnacle and she’s pieced all this together from multiple sources.’

‘I still think this is an insane way to get information out. Target sighted, just coming out of the brothel.’

‘Told you we’d end up here.’ Aneka shifted her direction slightly and followed the man her in-vision display was highlighting. He was short and he shuffled more than walked. He could have been anything from twenty to ninety since he was dressed in a long coat with the collar turned up, and the only recognisable feature from the back was his hair, which was thick, untidy, and black.

He wandered down an alley, made a couple of turns and seemed to be heading for the housing district, Downside. Aneka continued after him, not really hiding the fact that she was after him, and so was unsurprised when she turned a corner to find him waiting for her with a drawn knife.

‘You’re following me,’ he growled. Up close, he looked less pleasant than she had imagined. The skin on his face had an odd, reddish mottling over most of the left side, his nose was twisted from one too many punches, and his eyes were a watery grey. The facial marking looked more like a rash than a birthmark, but then he had just come from the brothel…

‘I just want to talk, Mister Vetch,’ Aneka told him. ‘You obtained some information about Pinnacle ship movements–’

Vetch shifted forward, his arm stabbing out. He was pretty fast for a man who shuffled, but Aneka saw the changes in expression as he decided to attack. Her left arm swept out to brush the strike aside while her right grabbed him by the throat, lifting him off his feet. He let out a strangled, gurgling noise and then a grunt as his back was slammed into the wall.

‘We may have a winner,’ Al commented.

‘We may have a paranoid loser,’ Aneka replied, twisting the knife out of Vetch’s hand and tossing it down the alley. Aloud she added, ‘That was not nice. I’m going to think you don’t like me. Let’s start again. I’ll let you go, you tell me where you got the information from, and then I won’t be mad at you for attacking me with a rusty kitchen knife.’ She let go and Vetch fell a foot to the ground, staggering and trying to press himself back against the wall.

‘He’ll kill me.’

‘I get a name, or you’ll wish I had killed you.’

‘Klish. He’s a crewman on the Baleful Eye. If he finds out–’

‘The only way he’ll find out is if you tell him. So don’t. Now get lost before I decide to break your nose, again.’ She watched as he scurried away, grabbing his knife from where it had landed. Inside her mind she said, ‘Get on to Gwy. Get her hunting through everything we have on the Baleful Eye. Oh, and tell them I’m coming back. I feel like I need to be disinfected after touching that.’

Gwy.

‘The Baleful Eye,’ Kade mused. ‘It’s Daven Sorien’s ship. He isn’t the last person I’d expect to be working for the Pinnacle, but he’s not high on the list. He’s taken down a few Pinnacle slave transports. The Baleful Eye was stolen from a Pinnacle shipyard.’

‘Or they gave it to him,’ Aneka replied. ‘And letting him take a few shipments of slaves once in a while would help his cover. Currently he’s our best suspect.’

‘Unfortunately,’ Gwy said, ‘the Baleful Eye left the system two days ago. We cannot investigate it at this time.’

‘I’ve been examining the information available about the ships currently in the system,’ Cassandra put in. ‘None of them are exactly upright examples of moral propriety, but they have been around since before the Hope of Sanctuary came here and there is a lot of history to work with. I do not believe any of them are likely candidates. They are, I believe, not successful enough.’

‘Daven’s always been successful,’ Kade admitted. ‘The Eye is a powerful ship, almost a match for the Hope, but he’s pulled off some pretty daring raids even if you consider that.’

‘So he’s either really good,’ Aneka said, ‘or–’

‘Aneka,’ Gwy interrupted, ‘I have detected a gravitational anomaly in the outer system. No transmission, just a brief gravitational pulse. Perhaps a message drone has been sent through.’

‘Get us out there then.’

‘I don’t get it,’ Kade said, frowning. ‘A gravitational anomaly means a message drone?’

‘Shadataga has wormhole technology,’ Ella replied, grinning. ‘If we know where we’re going, we can get there in an instant. We can do real-time comms over more or less any distance too, but they probably didn’t want the wormhole open that long.’

‘Wormholes? You travel through wormholes?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Damn. I’m starting to actually believe this might work.’

~~~

There was no sign of a probe as they reached the area of space Gwy had detected the anomaly in. There was very little of anything, in fact, but the ship was sure there had been something.

‘I am reading trace quantum fluctuations which are common after a wormhole event,’ Gwy stated as her systems scanned over the area and her image on the wall screen frowned. ‘I am sure that I detected… oh!’

‘Gwy?’ Aneka said, frowning at the AI.

‘I am detecting graviton emissions, coded ones. They did not send a probe.’

‘Then what? Oh.’ Behind Gwy, the screen changed to show the space in front of the ship and in it, appearing as if from nowhere, was the Amethyst Hyde. One of her hangar bay doors was opening, inviting them in. ‘Get us in there, Gwy. Then you can tell Aggy what to monitor for and take the afternoon off.’

‘Thank you, Aneka. Aggy is very pleased to see me.’

‘Aggy?’ Kade asked.

‘Formally Agroa Gar,’ Aneka replied, ‘but we call her Aggy. She’s the AI aboard the Amethyst Hyde. Gwy has a relationship with her. It’s… complicated.’

‘More complicated than you and Ella, and Cassandra and Al?’

‘Differently complicated. I’ve learned to just roll with it. The alternative is sleepless nights.’

‘You don’t usually sleep anyway.’

‘So not the point.’

Apparently Aneka’s message had caused something of a stir on Shadataga given that Aggy was carrying a lot of people and they had really had to hustle to get everything together so quickly. Drake and Shannon were on the flight deck when everyone disembarked from Gwy, but Gillian, Bashford, Monkey, and Delta were waiting in the reception hall, as were Winter and War.

‘You found her then?’ Gillian said as she stepped forward to give Ella a hug.

‘You found her, and trouble,’ Winter said.

‘You expected something else?’ Aneka replied, her tone bland.

‘No. It’s been a fairly quiet few decades, so we’re due some sort of disaster. Are you planning to introduce us to your new friend?’

‘Sure.’ Aneka looked up at the ceiling. ‘Drake, are we cloaked?’

‘Cloaked and moving in towards the inhabited region,’ Drake said from the hall’s speakers. ‘Aggy’s monitoring the comms traffic. All seems normal. No one spotted us.’

‘Thanks. Okay. This is Captain Anastasia Kade, pirate, currently assumed deceased. Ana, this is Gillian Gilroy, Leo Bashford, David Gibbons, Delta Ling, and these two are Winter and War. Somewhere upstairs are Drake, the captain, and Shannon Patton, and I doubt we’ll get much out of Aggy until she’s finished worrying over Gwy, but you’ll recognise her, she’s gold.’

‘You don’t mean precious, do you?’ Kade asked.

‘She has gold skin and silver eyes,’ Ella told her. ‘And she’s adorable.’

‘However,’ Winter went on, ‘we have a lot to discuss. Your message was brief, Aneka. We want details, and an explanation of the logistical requirements of this little operation.’

‘Up-to-date intelligence would be most useful too,’ War added. ‘In four hours we’re expecting to send a comms drone back with as much information as we can gather.’

‘We’d better get started then,’ Aneka replied.

Amethyst Hyde.

‘So,’ Drake said when Aneka was finished going over their plan, ‘all you want us to do is spirit everyone off Haven under the noses of the Pinnacle, to an as yet undetermined location where we will set them up in a new home?’

‘That about covers it,’ Aneka agreed.

‘Does it really sound that crazy compared to some of the things we’ve done?’ Ella asked.

‘No. Actually it sounds perfectly doable. We’ll need transports, but there are plenty of those. The problem is the concealment when you’re not sure who to conceal it from.’

‘Captain Drake is right,’ Winter said. ‘We’re going to need to identify anyone who could pose a threat to the security of the new site and exclude them.’

‘Possibly terminally,’ Aneka said, nodding. ‘I’ll sound out the Pinnacle woman tomorrow, but it’s this Captain Sorien I’m worried about, assuming he is the unknown spy.’

‘Can’t we hack his computers,’ Monkey suggested. ‘When he comes back we just get Aggy to infiltrate his ship’s systems. There’s bound to be something in there that will tell us one way or another.’

‘The Eye is ex-Pinnacle,’ Kade said. ‘It’s got excellent electronic warfare systems. Better than the Hope. Getting in from outside is going to be difficult.’

Aneka sighed. ‘I’ll get aboard and Al can go digging.’

‘Sorien likes tall women. Especially with black hair.’

‘I can do black hair, and it’ll be easier than going in cloaked. Any other preferences?’

‘Strong, which you’ve got covered. He likes them kind of slutty.’

‘Oh, Aneka can do slutty,’ Ella said, fighting to keep the smirk off her face.

Aneka gave her a smile and a little kiss on the cheek. ‘Thank you, dear. I had an excellent teacher.’

‘Hey!’

Pirate Cove, 7.1.560 FSC.

Ella scanned the selection of prostitutes awaiting their turn with a client as though undecided and very jaded. She let her gaze linger on a couple: a tall blonde woman and then a muscular, short-haired man who leered back at her a little too hopefully. Then she picked her glass up from the bar and walked over to the one red-haired woman in the room, naked aside from a collar.

‘You, come on.’

The slave looked up at her, nodded and got to her feet. ‘Please come with me. I am Lenora and I will be pleased to serve you in any way you wish.’

The rooms at the back of the brothel were small and pretty basic. There was a bed and a straight-backed chair, and that was it. The house did not worry about what you did with their employees, but if you wanted anything more complicated than a place to fuck, you had to bring your own toys.

Ella locked the door behind them and looked around, trying to keep the disgust off her face.

‘What would you like?’ Lenora said. ‘I’m skilled in any form of–’

‘Just sit down on the bed and shut up,’ Ella replied. Silently she spoke to Aneka. ‘I’m ready.’

It had been decided that Ella would handle Lenora while Aneka provided what Winter called ‘technical backup.’ What that meant was that she was back in the ducts, wired into Lenora’s communications tap and ready to make the Pinnacle agent’s life miserable.

‘Initiating cut-off now,’ Aneka replied.

Lenora’s brow shifted, tightening slightly, but she was good enough at hiding her feelings that only Ella’s accelerated perceptions spotted it.

‘About now you’ll have noticed that your computer has gone offline,’ Ella said. ‘You’re wondering how. You’re now wondering how I know and what else I know. Well, I know that that collar of yours isn’t like the others here, and I know something about it you don’t.’

There was tension in Lenora’s body. She was contemplating making a move, attacking Ella and taking the pistol attached to her boot. ‘What’s that?’

‘When they altered it, they added to it. They didn’t remove anything.’

Lenora’s eyes widened a little and then she stiffened as a burst of pain lanced through her body. It was brief, a taster triggered by Aneka as a demonstration, but the woman was panting when it died away.

‘Your masters can trigger that remotely,’ Ella said, her voice soft because she knew what it felt like and could not help feeling some sympathy. ‘We think it’s their safety mechanism in case you suddenly developed a conscience. We know that your name is Lenora Roheen, that you’re Pinnacle, and that you run the local spy ring. What we don’t know is why a Pinnacle woman would willingly let herself be used like this. My reading of the mindset suggests that no one like you would let this happen, and no man would even consider suggesting it.’

‘Why, exactly, should I explain myself to you?’ Lenora replied.

‘Aside from the potential for prolonged agony? Because we have something planned and your cooperation would be useful. But if we can’t have it, you’ll die. Here. In this sordid little room, screaming your lungs out in pain. I’ve worn one of those things. I know how it feels. Frankly, I’m not sure I could bring myself to do it to you, but luckily I have a more practical partner in charge of the button.’

‘If I die–’

‘The Pinnacle will send another, but that will take weeks. The owners here will wonder how your collar malfunctioned, but they won’t cry over a dead slave. What are you doing here? Why did you let this happen?’

‘I fell in love.’ She lay back on the bed, covering her face with her hands. ‘He was tall and handsome. So strong, but he had a quick mind. Of course, I knew it was stupid, that I was condemning us both. I told him that we should stay apart. I would sell him to a good home. He said I was the most beautiful woman he had ever met and leaving me would tear his heart out.’

‘Oh,’ Ella said flatly.

‘We had almost a year of stolen meetings. It was the best year of my life. And then my husband caught us. He’s a…’ She trailed off, seeming to reconsider her statement. ‘He works in the military. Intelligence. He’s not my husband now, of course. He redeemed himself by suggesting a plan to his colonel and they promoted him when I accepted. They told me I could redeem myself by doing just what I’d done to get myself into this. I would be sent here and I would spend my time being fucked by animals, and they would get me out at some point. The alternative was re-education.’

‘That doesn’t necessarily sound too bad.’

‘No, it doesn’t, but the people who undergo it are… different afterwards. They come out… less like people. I met one once and I never want to be like that.’

‘What happened to the slave?’

‘He was…’ Her voice broke off in a choking noise and she paused for a second and then went on in the same flat, dispassionate tone she had been using. ‘The Pinnacle never wastes good slaves. They made sure he would never be able to do the same with another woman and he was put to work again.’

‘They castrated him? And your husband got rid of his embarrassing wife by shipping her off to become a whore. You know they are never going to call you back, don’t you?’

‘The thought has crossed my mind.’

‘What do you think?’ Ella asked silently. ‘I think she might go for it.’

‘I think you might be right’ Aneka replied. ‘Tell her.’

‘What if I were to offer you the chance to leave here? You probably couldn’t go home, but we can offer you asylum somewhere else. Maybe even Old Earth. There’s a lot of land there that’s unused. You could set up a small farm or something if you couldn’t bring yourself to live among “animals.”’

Lenora pushed herself up onto her elbows. ‘If the network here goes silent, they’ll send in a fleet and obliterate the place.’

‘There won’t be anyone here for them to kill. We’re moving everyone. Creating a new Haven, one the Pinnacle know nothing about. All we need is some time. You and the other spies keep feeding them reports saying nothing much is happening, and we start shipping people out to the new site.’

‘If I say yes, it’s not going to do you much good. They have another source. There’s someone… I’m pretty sure it’s one of the pirates, a captain, but his whole ship must be involved. They move freely and they can send out messages when they’re away. They never told me who it is, but I know he’s out there.’

‘So she doesn’t know,’ Aneka mused. ‘She really is as much a victim in this as the rest of them.’

‘Seems that way.’ Aloud Ella said, ‘We’re working on that. We have a suspect.’

Lenora looked at her for a second. ‘The others, the other slaves, they get asylum too. The locals would never trust them and they can’t go back. Dineera was sixteen when she was brought here. She was a virgin! She’s never known anything else. She’ll never find anyone willing to take her and they’ll turn her into a zombie.’

‘Everyone gets taken care of.’

‘All right. You have my cooperation. You have my word. I don’t suppose that means a lot, considering what you must think of us, but–’

‘Actually, from what I know of your culture, I think it does.’

Amethyst Hyde, 9.1.560 FSC.

‘All right,’ Gillian said, rubbing at the bridge of her nose, ‘we have all the spies on-side and Aggy says their reports seem clean.’

‘There is the possibility of hidden code words,’ Winter commented, ‘but our reading of their behaviour at the interviews suggests that they will play ball.’

War’s lips twitched. ‘Still sticking to these ancient idioms, sister?’

‘I like them. Don’t think I didn’t see you cooing over Aneka’s gun. It was like a mother and a long-lost child. We all have our peculiarities.’

Kade shook her head. ‘Are all AIs like this?’

‘Like people?’ Gillian suggested. ‘No, only the ones worth talking to. How are we coming on the new site?’

‘There’s a G-type system about thirty parsecs from here,’ Drake said. ‘Shadataga dropped a probe in there yesterday and it’s looking good.’

‘G-type?’ Kade asked.

‘Old Federation terminology. G-type systems have garden worlds in them, capable of supporting life and usually already having some form of it. In this case, it’s got enough plants to have a stable, breathable atmosphere. The gravity is a little low for my tastes, but not too bad. Resources are reasonable, not too much volcanism, and the ground should be good for growing crops.’

‘Huh, there are going to be a few people wondering about the idea of becoming farmers. Even if we have the hydroponics facilities. I think it’s going to take some adjustment.’

‘We can provide help if you need it,’ Gillian said. ‘Shadataga has very good vocational courses and, at least for a few years, you’re going to be a sort of client state.’

‘When we do something,’ Winter stated, ‘we do it properly. The reports I’ve seen on “New Haven” look perfect. I’ve suggested that we get started on construction.’

‘How long are we going to have to keep fooling the Pinnacle before we can move?’ Kade asked.

‘Basic orbital reception facilities will be in place the day after tomorrow. Ground habitation completion in two weeks. A little longer for full facilities to be ready, but we can begin moving people out once they have somewhere to live.’

‘Two weeks? You’re going to build a city for forty thousand people in two weeks, with a spaceport?’

‘Well, we could probably go a little faster, but I did say we like to do things right.’

Kade was looking a little shocked, but any reply was cut off as Aggy’s avatar appeared beside the briefing room table. ‘Aneka, the signal Lenora was told to trip if she needed to talk to someone has been tripped. I detected inbound traffic to her system about ten minutes ago but have not decrypted it yet.’

Aneka sighed. ‘Maybe we’ll have to put a rush on the building anyway.’

Pirate Cove.

The room was a little cramped with four people in it, but Lenora had asked very nicely, but urgently, that another girl be brought in with her, so Aneka had picked up the indicated young woman and taken her back to join Lenora and Ella.

‘This is Dineera,’ Lenora said. ‘I mentioned her–’

‘I remember,’ Aneka said. The girl was young, not much more than twenty. Her blonde hair was cut short which did not help make her look happier. Despite her youth, she had a distinctly womanly figure and she had to get plenty of clients, which was not a good thing in her case.

‘I sort of took her under my wing when she was brought here. I… I told her what we’re planning because…’

‘Because I’ve been getting very depressed,’ Dineera said. ‘I wanted a way out and I tried the only way I could think of last week.’

‘They found her before she bled out too much and they healed her up good as new because a scarred slave doesn’t get as much work, but…’

‘That’s fine,’ Ella said, ‘as long as you can keep your mouth shut, Dineera.’ There was a firm nod as a reply. ‘I don’t think Dineera explains why you needed to talk to us.’

‘I got a message from my handlers.’

‘We noticed.’

‘They say there’s a group of five new spies coming in in the next few days. They want more coverage after what happened with Kade. I’m pretty sure they’re all people like Naseena. They’ve been pressed into service with promises and a few exaggerated threats. But we won’t know who they are until they check in with me.’

Aneka tapped her lip thoughtfully. ‘What’s the procedure when they get here?’

‘They’re told to come to me, pose as clients. I check them out. They’re given a pass phrase to use. If I’m happy, I send them to Naseena and she gives them the protocols to send reports out through her system. Then it’s business as usual.’

‘Fair enough. When the first of them turns up, you trigger the alarm. We’ll get them when they talk to Naseena, but we’ll keep an eye on both ends of the transaction, just in case. I don’t like this whole “extra coverage” idea.’

‘No,’ Lenora replied. ‘There’s something about it I don’t like either.’

Amethyst Hyde, 10.1.560 FSC.

‘The sites devoted to the Baleful Eye are full of the news,’ Aggy said to the people gathered in the briefing room. ‘He attacked a large Pinnacle slave transport and recovered over a hundred slaves. There are stories of how he destroyed two light cruisers to do it. He brought a few of them back with him, and the rest are arriving tomorrow aboard the captured transport.’

‘And Lenora was told to expect several new spies soon,’ Ella said. ‘Coincidence?’

‘Unlikely,’ Kade growled.

‘Unfortunately this does not entirely convict Captain Sorien,’ Winter said. ‘He could be being set up as transport for the spies. You brought Naseena to Haven yourself.’

‘Yeah, but… The Eye is a big, powerful ship. She’s an enforcement cruiser, heavily armoured, good close-range weapons. She’s built for boarding actions, not for taking on light cruisers at range.’

Aggy turned her head and an image of the Baleful Eye appeared beside her. It was not a pretty ship; there was a rather heavy-looking midsection with a more pointed nose and a narrowed rear where the fusion drive was located. The midsection had a heavy docking tube collapsed in on one side and it bristled with gun turrets. ‘I have to concur with the captain, though War is the expert. It seems that the majority of weaponry is designed to be effective at close range. Antiproton beams, multi-barrel railguns, and a pair of gravity traction beams. There are three heavier gamma-ray laser turrets, but against two targets with force screens?’

War nodded. ‘The scenario seems an unlikely one. And there is little sign of battle damage following this daring combat action.’

‘Captain Sorien will be hosting a welcome party at Nightside in two days, for the newly arrived refugees,’ Aggy went on. ‘The amount of publicity suggests he’s trying to take over Captain Kade’s position as “most loved pirate.” If the plan remains the same, this would be a good time for you to ingratiate yourself, Aneka.’

‘The plan stays the same,’ Aneka said. ‘I want to hear what Sorien has to say for himself.’

Pirate Cove, 11.1.560 FSC.

Aneka watched as a tall, well-built man walked up to Lenora and waved for her to follow him. The girl got trade, but three of her customers so far that morning were not what they seemed and she doubted they had been allowed access to what they paid for. Lenora might have been forced into slavery, but Aneka doubted she took that from the people she was supposed to be supervising.

This particular patron looked like he was pirate crew more than standard refugee. He had muscles, a body which suggested exercise rather than hard work. He was attractive, reasonably well dressed, his hair had been cut by someone who knew what they were doing, and fairly recently.

‘His nails look manicured,’ Al said. ‘The weapon he is carrying is clean, very well maintained.’

‘You had me at “manicured,”’ Aneka replied, getting to her feet and moving to the rear of the room where she stopped in front of one of the men. ‘Wescott?’ she asked aloud, knowing it was because his name was written above his head. ‘Dalrane Wescott, right? I thought it was you. What are you doing here?’

‘Uh… Do I know you, ma’am?’

‘Check Lenora’s system,’ Aneka said silently while her mouth was saying, ‘We met on Oberian? At that party Lotram threw. I mean, we were both pretty drunk.’

‘Uh… Oh, right. Lotram’s party.’

‘Phew! Glad you remember because… wow. You were like an animal. And you ended up here, making money off that big dick. Wow, talk about a plum job.’

‘Huh… uh… Well…’

‘Lenora just tripped the signal flag on her server,’ Al said.

‘Sorry, Dal, gotta go.’ Aneka bolted through the rear door before anyone could stop her, darted down a corridor, turned right and headed for the door at the end which was where Lenora took her clients. As far as Aneka could tell, the brothel provided room and board to several of its employees, and not cheaply even if they were not slaves. Her boot hit the door and it slammed open to the sound of breaking plastic.

The tall, attractive man had his pistol in his hand, and not figuratively. He looked around, angry, his gun rising as he turned.

‘He’s Pinnacle!’ Lenora squeaked. She looked like she was having trouble breathing, never mind speaking.

Aneka took in the small box in the gunman’s left hand as she stepped into the room. He was well trained, probably military, and the door breaking had not surprised him for more than a fraction of a second, but Aneka was not even remotely Human. She caught his extended wrist, twisting it away from her as her left hand came up and then snapped out, the base of her fist smashing into his face. His eyes glazed over for a second as he crumpled, the gun falling from his hand. He recovered quickly, shaking his head as he started to rise, but then Aneka locked his arm, pushing him down to his knees. Then she slammed her knee into his jaw and he went down, tilting back until his locked arm stopped him.

‘I’ll take care of him,’ Aneka said, slinging the big man across her shoulders with little apparent effort. ‘Send a message saying he never arrived here.’ Then she turned and marched out.

Dalrane looked at her as she walked through with someone slung across her shoulders like a sack of coal. His eyes widened

‘Bastard owes me money,’ Aneka said. ‘Two whole coins! I’m going to have to kill him, obviously.’

‘Oh… uh… of course.’

Strangely, no one tried to stop her leaving.

Amethyst Hyde.

‘What do we do with him?’ Ella asked.

Their prisoner was sedated in one of the Hyde’s medical units. Aggy had already run sufficient tests to determine that Lenora had been telling the truth. The man was almost certainly Pinnacle. The fact that he had had some sort of control box for Lenora’s collar was a pretty good signal, but his largely unmodified genetics also suggested it.

‘Keep him under,’ Aneka replied. ‘He’ll be safe enough like that. If Lenora didn’t know he was coming, then the others didn’t know he was Pinnacle. They probably wanted to check up on her as well as the others.’ She glanced at Winter. ‘I suggest putting a bit of a rush on the construction. We might be able to delay them with the “he didn’t arrive” message, but they’re bound to start probing.’

‘Agreed,’ Winter replied. ‘This makes determining whether Sorien is our mystery agent even more important.’

‘That had not escaped me. His party is tomorrow. I’ll consult my fashion advisor for something suitable to wear and nail the bastard.’

‘You have a fashion advisor?’ Ella asked and then sagged. ‘Oh, right. Something slutty coming right up.’

Pirate Cove, 12.1.560 FSC.

Daven Sorien was built to be a pirate captain. He looked the part rather the way Kade was such a good match for Pirate Queen. There was something of the swashbuckler about him, though he had rather more muscle than Douglas Fairbanks. His shoulders were broad and his hips were narrow, giving him a slightly triangular torso. His arms were thickly muscled and his stomach, heavily on display thanks to a black, silk shirt which was open to the navel, would have made a washboard envious. There was a pair of thick, strong thighs clad in a pair of britches which made it quite clear that he was not lacking in other endowments. His skin had a dark tan, his teeth flashed white when he smiled, which was often, and he had clear, blue eyes with just a hint of green in them. Sadly he lacked a thin moustache, but his hair was shoulder length, black, and had a tousled, wild quality about it.

He had made speeches about freedom being the most precious commodity in the galaxy a fair bit at the start of the party an hour or so ago, but now he was just drinking and plotting how to get his hands on his latest potential conquest. She was tall and strong, and her hair, which fell to the upper slopes of her breasts, was black with red tints. He had spotted her easily among the crowd because, even in a horde of extroverts, she was something else. She was wearing knee-high, strapped boots with a wedge heel, leather bracers, and a corset and harness arrangement over a small pair of latex briefs and a fishnet body-stocking. No bra. She was made for him!

Which, of course, she more or less was, and Aneka was beginning to get a little annoyed that he had not made a move yet when he appeared beside her at the bar, all smiles.

‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ he said, turning up the smile a little more. ‘I’m Daven Sorien, Captain of the Baleful Eye.’

Aneka smiled back and signalled Al to pour on the charm. Her pupils dilated and her nipples thickened under his gaze. ‘Aneka,’ she replied. ‘I know who you are, of course. Everyone’s been talking about you.’

‘Nothing bad, I hope?’

‘The bad parts were the best bits. Good boys never seem to know what to do with me.’ She picked up her whiskey glass and sank the contents, running her tongue over her lips.

‘Another?’ he asked.

‘Please.’ He looked across the bar to where Naseena was busy at the optics. Aneka noticed his eyes straying across her behind. Then he paused and looked back. ‘I have a very fine single malt in my cabin.’

‘But… your party?’

‘I think they can do without me now, and I feel the need to share a fine whiskey with a beautiful woman.’

‘Will I do?’

He laughed. ‘Oh yes, Aneka. You will do very nicely.’

The Baleful Eye.

Sorien’s ship was a tenth of the size of the Hope of Sanctuary and not designed for long-haul travel even if it had a warp drive of the latest Pinnacle design. Most of the crew quarters were bunks, but there were a few cabins for the senior crew. Sorien had one to himself, but even then it was nothing compared to Kade’s lavish apartment.

You could tell that he considered the bed to be the focal point. It was the majority stakeholder as far as floor space went, but he had embellished a standard frame with silk sheets, black ones obviously, and had erected a canopy of sorts over it in a deep red brocade material. Aside from that there was a desk which looked underused, a wardrobe, and a door leading to the bathroom which was compact.

With nowhere else to sit, Aneka settled onto the bed, lying back against the headboard while he poured their drinks. What was it with pirates and drinking while sprawled?

‘Al? Please tell me you’ve got into their network.’

‘In and busy cracking their file system security.’

‘Good. I really would prefer not to have to let him do what I’ve suggested he can do.’

‘I’m working as fast as I can, Aneka.’

‘I know.’ Aloud she said, ‘You’re really making a name for yourself. Now that Captain Kade is gone, people will need a new man to look up to.’ She put a little emphasis on ‘man’ and he glanced back at her, smiling.

‘Kade was good, but she took too many risks. She hit the Pinnacle too hard and risked bringing their wrath down upon Haven. We are not strong enough to go against them. I make do with the small victories luck hands to me. She wanted to stop them entirely, bring them to their knees. It is a laudable goal, but not one she had any hope of achieving.’

Which was true enough. ‘She gave people hope, I guess.’

‘False hope.’ He walked over and handed her a glass before settling down beside her. ‘These latest attacks of hers were pride running away with her. Hitting border stations, seeking to steal their weapons and stop them from attacking a world they covet. She overstepped her bounds and she paid for it… But she was a fine woman.’ He raised his glass in salute and took a sip of his drink.

Aneka followed suit; it was not that fine a whiskey, and it was a blend. ‘I came here hoping to ship out with her, but she’s gone.’

‘You fancy yourself a pirate?’

‘I can fight. I’m fast and I’m stronger than I look. I can shoot too.’

‘The life is more than that, though. There are long flights between the fights. Much tedious waiting.’

She grinned. ‘There’s always something to do while waiting. Card games perhaps.’

‘Yes. The Eye is a small ship, but powerful. There is not too much room so we play a lot of poker, among other things.’

‘Oh, I’m terrible at poker. I always lose my shirt.’

He laughed. ‘That explains much.’ His drink was placed on a small table beside the bed, which meant he was preparing to make his move.

She grinned and pushed her chest out. ‘You like the outfit?’

‘I would be a very stupid man to say I did not.’ His hand came down on her thigh, tracing up over the fishnet. ‘It is most becoming. If you joined my crew, I would have you lead the battle. The crewmen we face would be too busy staring to fight back.’

She giggled, sipped her drink and looked into his eyes as her tongue slid over her lips. ‘Any time now would be good, Al.’

‘I am searching through the ship’s records. The man has the organisational ability of a teenage boy.’

Sorien leaned forward, pausing with his lips an inch or so from Aneka’s mouth before pressing closer. His hand slid up her body, over her hip, and then she lost it as it traced over her corset. It returned cupping her left breast, and she gave a little moan as he continued kissing her.

‘There are,’ he said, shifting to kiss her cheek and then moving off toward her neck, ‘of course, other pursuits which can be undertaken on long journeys.’

‘Oh… yes…’

His hand moved again, finding the buckles holding her cincher together and starting to undo them. ‘More pleasant ones than cards.’

‘Mmm…’

‘I may be able to find a place for a new crewman…’

Data began to stream across the inside of Aneka’s eyelids. They were message records, each one detailing a target ship the Eye was to hit. Every once in a while, there was a rendezvous with a Pinnacle transport for meetings or supply transfers. From the quantity of them, it looked as though Sorien had not made a move without Pinnacle direction since he had started.

Sorien had managed to get past the row of buckles and the corset came free, sliding out from under the harness, which was the next line of defence. He was going to have to remove that and the boots and bracers before he could get past the fishnet.

‘Fishnet,’ Al commented as he put up another set of emails, ‘such an appropriate term, though it seems to be remarkably good at catching men.’

The new emails detailed the rumours Sorien was to have spread about the missile warheads the Pinnacle were supposedly stockpiling. Sorien had questioned the method of dissemination, but his bosses had replied with a statement that their sociometric team had determined the best mechanism with the least risk of discovery.

‘Sociometry,’ Al said, ‘more Speaker’s area of expertise than mine.’

‘There is one thing I’d like to know, before I consider signing up,’ Aneka said aloud.

‘And what is that?’ Sorien replied, still kissing her neck.

‘Did the Pinnacle catch you stealing this tub, or did they set you up with her so you could come here and spy for them?’ His hand froze on the buckle nestled between Aneka’s breasts. ‘I think it was the latter because they seem to be going to a lot of trouble to keep up your pretence of being a pirate.’

He rolled away from her, sitting up at the side of the bed and sinking his whiskey. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Though,’ she went on as though he had not spoken, ‘you do attack ships. Ships they want you to attack. What’s that? Taking out supplies going to places they want to acquire? Weakening their economy? I’ve seen that done before, thirty years ago and halfway across the galaxy. It’s not a bad strategy, especially if it can’t be traced back to them. But it can, because you kept all their messages.’

He swept to his feet, raising the pistol he had hidden under the bedside table. He held it tucked into his side in a good, close-quarters shooting position.

Aneka raised her hands. ‘Hey, I’m unarmed. I’m practically naked.’

‘Yes, I shall see to it that a knife is found with your body. A Pinnacle spy sent to assassinate the captains. That should work.’

‘It won’t. Look, you’re finished. You’ve got two choices. Pull the trigger and try to make a run for it, and you’ll get blown apart before you get a thousand klicks out, or you can do as we say, keep things ticking over with your masters and walk away to do whatever you like at the end.’

He laughed. ‘You are a brave woman. You lie there making threats while I hold a gun on you and you look so confident. It will be a shame to kill you.’

Aneka lowered her right hand. ‘Put that thing down before you hurt yourself.’

‘I was really thinking of hurting you.’

Aneka fired her pulse weapon. Sorien let out a grunt as the air was forced from his lungs and he was catapulted across the room to slam into the wall. ‘Or I could hurt you instead, obviously,’ she said. She slid off the bed and turned to look at him. He remained standing for a second, blinking at her, his gun held limply in his hand. Then he sank to his knees and keeled over, falling face-first onto the deck.

‘Call Trin,’ Aneka said. ‘Tell her to get everyone she can over here.’

‘We won’t be able to keep this secret anymore,’ Al replied.

‘Thankfully that isn’t an issue. It’s time we got the rest of Haven involved in this.’

Pirate Cove, 13.1.560 FSC.

They had gathered quite a crowd by the time Kade walked into Nightside flanked by Aneka and Ella, and with Al’s avatar, Cassandra, Trin, and Lanyon behind them. It was partially because Ella, Al, and Cassandra were carrying rifles, Al’s his huge, fully automatic machine gun, but it was mainly because Kade was back. They had watched her being launched into space, a corpse, and here she was walking into the bar.

Kade marched up to the counter, gave Naseena an unreadable look and then climbed up so that everyone could see her. ‘Are we ready?’ she asked Aneka.

‘You’re patched through the entire station announcement system.’

‘Right. Everyone?’ The captain’s voice could be heard repeated in the walkways outside even as the chatter in the room continued. ‘Let’s have some quiet. You’ve got questions and I’ve got answers, but just shut up so I can give them.’ The chatter died away and she gave a nod. ‘Yesterday some of my people took Captain Sorien into custody. His ship has been disabled and him and his crew have been locked in. Now I’m back from the dead. The reason for both is a simple one with far-reaching consequences. Sorien was a Pinnacle spy.’

Everyone started shouting, which was expected, and Kade let it go on for a while. The decision to lay everything on Sorien had not been an entirely popular one, but even Trin had had to admit that the others were not exactly working of their own volition, and several of them had been quite convinced that their work prevented the Pinnacle from taking more drastic action against Haven. It was quite possible that it did.

‘Okay, quiet down. Okay, yes, this means that the Pinnacle know exactly where we are. They’ve known for longer than Sorien has been around. While my friends were trying to hunt down whoever set me up at station two-oh-six, they discovered some equipment built into our communications hub which has to have been in there since it was built. They’ve known about us since the very beginning.’

‘Then why haven’t they come here?’ someone shouted.

‘Because Haven gives all those slaves out there hope. Hopeless people, people with nothing to lose, they don’t work as hard, they consider doing drastic things. People with hope are better slaves than people without. But what we’ve been giving them is false hope and it has to stop.’

‘So… what, we quit this place? Just leave?’

‘Yes.’ The sound broke out again, but this time she shouted over it. ‘Yes, we leave Haven and we go to somewhere better. Somewhere they don’t know about. A new Haven on a planet where we can really become a society to give people real hope.’

‘How are we going to move everyone out of the system? It’ll take months!’

‘What do we do when we get there? We’ll have nothing!’

‘We’ll have,’ Kade yelled over the questions, ‘help. I met a few new friends recently. Friends who make the Pinnacle look like children. We can do this! We’ll have homes, farms, medical aid you can’t dream of. And we’ll be free of the Pinnacle for good!’

The shouting died away, even if the conversations continued. It looked as though Kade had got through to them. What most of them wanted was a quiet life away from the Pinnacle. This might mean pulling up stumps and moving everything they had, but right now they knew it was just a matter of time before their homes were blasted to rubble.

‘Now all we have to do,’ Ella’s voice said in Aneka’s mind, ‘is actually pull this off.’

Part Eight: New Haven

Amethyst Hyde, 15.1.560 FSC.

The briefing room table was hosting a schematic of the Haven system with five green dots which were not normally there in the mix. They had been in the system for six hours, and they were going to be there for another two days.

‘The loading is going smoothly,’ Winter said, ‘for a given value of “smoothly.” Obviously there are some wrinkles.’

‘Wrinkles?’ Kade asked.

‘People with some incredibly important family heirloom which has to be treated with care. People who want to ship the entire contents of a station with them. People who want to be sure that the family pet odd-little-creature-the-kids-love is going to be all right on the flight.’

‘Oh, wrinkles. Is three days going to be enough?’

‘To clear the smaller stations, yes. We’re hoping the process can be streamlined significantly for the larger ones. They tend to be closer together for one thing. Travel between them is less of an issue.’

‘What about when they get there?’

‘We’re transitioning everyone through Wormhole Junction. They will have medical checks and a vocational assistance interview.’

‘A what interview?’

‘We’ll assess their needs on arrival and ensure that they have them, and we’ll also check them out to be sure we’re not taking any unknown Pinnacle agents to the new site.’

‘Huh. It’s almost like you’ve done this before.’

Winter smiled. ‘I haven’t, but I did run the Federation’s intelligence agency for five hundred years. Besides, it’s the other AIs who are dealing with that. Speaker has an army of interviewers ready to handle this and his people are exceptionally good at picking up the smallest important detail. Everything will be filtered and cross-referenced through him so our chances of missing anything are within acceptable risk parameters.’

‘Just don’t ask what “acceptable” means to them,’ Drake suggested.

Kade frowned. ‘We can’t take risks with this.’

Drake shrugged and looked at Winter. ‘What’s Speaker’s estimate on this one?’

‘One in fourteen billion, but the uncertainty is higher due to sentients being involved rather than physics. He’s unwilling to officially state better than one in twelve billion.’

‘But…’ Kade was looking confused. ‘There are only forty thousand people in Haven.’

‘Statistics don’t work like that,’ Ella said. ‘Yes, at Speaker’s worst estimate there’s a one in three hundred thousand chance of missing a spy, but this could be that one chance. It’s just… pretty unlikely. That’s why Drake said not to ask. Us mortals tend to have a less perfect view of perfection than they do.’

‘Oh. Right. Well, I’ll try not to lose sleep over it. I mean, one in three hundred thousand. It’s almost a certainty.’

‘Nah,’ Aneka said. ‘One in a million, you’ve got problems. Anything else you’re home free. My main worry is that we don’t know what the Pinnacle are up to. We don’t know they’re in the dark over this.’

‘I’m hoping they are not,’ War said, her voice calm.

‘You decided on a strategy then?’

‘Yes. In concert with Speaker. We believe a demonstration of our capabilities is in order.’

‘I’ve been dropping probes into Pinnacle systems for the last couple of days,’ Winter added. ‘I’ve been able to determine that their military spending is rising at the moment. It seems that they are gearing up for another run at the galaxy, or at least Old Earth.’

‘Has anyone told Abby?’ Aneka asked.

‘We’re keeping her apprised of the situation. She has indicated willingness to assist if required. They are on-board with handling the Pinnacle slave women. Frankly, if anyone can provide them with a new home, it’s the Old Earth Humans. Speaker believes we may be able to bring the Pinnacle over as a whole, if they can be persuaded to moderate their behaviour. They would make a powerful ally in this part of the galaxy.’

‘If they can be persuaded to stop enslaving everyone else.’

‘That is one of the behaviours they would need to moderate, yes.’

‘Moderate… right. You need to get out in the field more, Mother Dearest. You’re starting to sound like an AI.’

‘I am an AI, Aneka,’ Winter replied, though she looked rather pleased at Aneka’s choice of endearment.

‘Yes, but you used to sound like a Jenlay.’

War leaned towards Aneka and stage-whispered, ‘I don’t think her avatars have been getting enough sex.’

Ella, watching quietly from one of the chairs, giggled. ‘Looks like it’s party time tonight then.’

Winter gave her sister AI a glower and then shrugged. ‘Well, I’m not going to say no.’

~~~

‘It kind of seems like these AIs run your entire Collective,’ Kade said as Aneka walked her to the airlock and the bridge to Pirate Cove.

‘They do. At first it was a bunch of individual governments and a system of diplomatic channels. But the AIs are so good at solving problems. Everyone began deferring to them whenever something came up. The Herosians are a little more independent, but even they tend to come to Shadataga when there’s a trade dispute or something. We have the best mediators in the galaxy. Now… The Jenlay in particular really just let the AIs dictate policy. There’s still a Jenlay government, and a Navy, but what they do is mostly down to what Shadataga thinks would be for the best.’

‘And no one minds?’

‘Some do. Most have worked out that their lives are not really that different from what they were, but they have better toys. Better medical care, better transport, better communications.’

‘Better weapons?’

‘We don’t let the really nasty stuff out to anyone. I suspect they’re going to use one of those as their demonstration to the Pinnacle.’

Kade raised her eyebrows. ‘Some sort of bomb? A death ray?’

Aneka laughed. ‘If they do what I think, it’s some sort of bomb. It’s just… Well, I don’t want to spoil the surprise.’

‘I’m not fond of surprises.’

Shrugging, Aneka opened the airlock. ‘Some are worth the wait.’

16.1.560 FSC.

Aneka opened her eyes and looked up at what would have been a dark room if she were organic. She had shut down next to Ella when the redhead had finally given in to near exhaustion. She checked the time and found that just over two hours had passed which meant that Al had woken her early, but it was Aggy’s voice which sounded in her head.

‘Aneka, I have detected a message going out from the Pirate Cove comms system. The destination designator is a Pinnacle enforcement base eight parsecs away.’

‘Lenora?’

‘The message was sent in the clear from a public terminal near Nightside. I have been able to grab an image from a station security sensor and have identified the sender based on the transmission time. It was one Rendan Marlow, one of the Baleful Eye’s crewmen.’ A grainy picture appeared in Aneka’s vision field showing a dark-haired man with a compact, tightly muscled body.

‘The Eye’s crew are supposed to be on the Eye.’

‘Apparently one of them has got off the vessel. I have no information on him and the security sensors in the asteroid are… patchy at best. My last sighting of him suggests that he is heading for the hangar bay.’

‘Crap. Whoever he is, he’s going after Kade.’ Aneka swung her legs out of bed and reached for her suit. ‘Get a message through to the Hope and tell them to be careful. This guy got off a sealed ship. He’s dangerous.’

‘Aneka?’ Ella sounded sleepy, but she had woken as Aneka moved.

‘We’ve got trouble.’

‘I’ll get up.’

‘No, you’re tired and I’m a machine.’

‘I’m getting up.’ She was already sliding out of bed and reaching for her clothes.

‘Okay, but put a move on. I think someone’s going to try to kill Ana.’

Hope of Sanctuary.

Anastasia became aware that she was aware. She had fallen asleep lying on the pillows in her lounge after not a few glasses of rum. It was the good stuff Gwy had taught Aggy to make and the hangover was remarkably light; there was a dull throb somewhere behind her eyes, but she felt like it was going to be bearable when she decided that looking was an option.

But something had woken her. What? A sound? A feeling? What could have pulled her from a deep sleep after that much good rum? Whatever it was, she decided it was not good and she moved, pushing herself sideways and rolling across the uneven surface before pulling herself to one knee and looking up.

There was someone standing maybe a foot away from where she had been. A man, not especially tall, but his body showed a lot of muscle definition through the tight, high-tech combat suit he was wearing. There was a dagger in his hand which glinted in the dim light.

‘I have got to get better security,’ she grumbled. ‘Marlow, right? You’re one of Sorien’s people.’

‘More correctly, he is one of ours.’ Marlow turned his dagger around and edged forward. ‘Don’t bother calling for help. I disabled internal communications before coming in here.’ He was being wary. She was unarmed and naked, but she had a reputation for unorthodox and very effective combat moves.

‘You’re Pinnacle. An assassin?’

‘A watchdog and, where necessary, a cleaner. I kept an eye on Sorien.’

‘Kept?’

‘He was no longer of use. He failed us.’

‘Better make sure you don’t fail then.’ She charged at him, lowering her shoulder as she bolted forward. He was caught off-guard and tried to dodge, but only succeeded in putting himself off balance so that when she hit him square on the chest, he went down with her landing on top of him and grabbing for his knife hand. She caught his wrist and twisted as he fought to ram the weapon into her side, but she was stronger. Her arm snapped out, straightening sharply, and there was an unhealthy crunching sound as his wrist gave way under the strain. He let out a shriek of pain and she used his momentary disorientation to shift her target, ramming her forearm into his throat and pressing down. He struggled, his fist beat into her side and then at her arm, but he was weakening as his larynx crushed under her weight. He gave one last slap at her arm and then stopped moving, but she held on, keeping the pressure on his throat right up until Trin pulled her off him.

‘He’s dead, Ana,’ the cat-girl said, looking down at the blood speckling the man’s lips.

‘I wanted to be sure.’ She kicked his boot. ‘Teach you to fuck with an Amazon, bastard.’

‘I found fucking with an Amazon fairly pleasant,’ Ella said from the doorway.

Anastasia turned to see her shouldering her pulse rifle. Aneka was behind her. ‘You two knew he was coming?’

‘A little too late,’ Aneka replied, ‘but I’m glad to see we weren’t needed.’

‘I don’t know. You got anything for a hangover on you?’

‘Try showering with Trin and her tail,’ Ella replied. ‘I find sex always helps me. I’m going back to bed. And get your security sorted out.’ She turned and slumped back towards the airlock.

‘I told you to stay in bed,’ Aneka said as she followed.

Anastasia grinned and then turned to see Trin looking expectantly at her. ‘What?’

‘Hangover cure reporting for duty, Captain,’ Trin said, her tail executing a sharp salute.

The captain shrugged. ‘Oh well, why the fuck not?’

Amethyst Hyde, 19.1.560 FSC.

‘We load the Hope last,’ Kade said flatly. ‘If they got that message and they send something, I want to be ready to fend them off.’

Drake gave a nod. ‘We have eight fighter drones available, and Gwy, but it’s going to take a while loading the Hope so I see no problem with leaving her until last.’ He glanced at Winter who was coordinating the second wave of transfers to the wormhole transports.

‘It makes little difference. The Hope will have a hangar bay to herself. Loading her last is acceptable.’

‘How’s the loading progressing?’ Kade asked.

Winter smiled. ‘In an orderly fashion. For a given value of “orderly.” Pirates, and there are a lot of them involved, are not noted for their cooperative nature.’

‘They know they need to do it. It’s mostly just putting on a front.’

‘We’re quite aware of that. We are accommodating them where it is viable, but there are a few requests which are having to be denied. Aneka and Ella are dealing with those, for the most part.’

‘You know, Ella seems like she knows one end of a blaster from the other, and she took down one of my crew with her bare hands no problem, but she doesn’t really seem the forceful type.’

‘She’s been dealing with genius students for the last thirty years, Captain. Believe me, she can be forceful when she needs to be.’

Pirate Cove.

‘And I’m going to need priority access to shipyard facilities when we get there. The Carpathia needs a full overhaul, new main guns, a new missile battery…’

Ella listened to Lane Nash listing his demands, maintaining a professional, interested expression the entire time. He was not the first of the pirate captains to try to abuse the facilities they were going to get and she was sure he would not be the last. They had all seen the transports, and the Hyde, and the Hyde’s fighter drones, and they had figured out that these new friends of Kade’s had some pretty juicy tech they could use to increase their firepower, and their bank balances.

‘The reactor needs refuelling soon,’ Nash went on. ‘Maybe an upgrade is due, increase the power output, maybe get one of those reactionless systems put in to reduce fuel consumption.’

‘Well, that all sounds quite reasonable,’ Ella said and Nash came to a grinding halt. Ella had worked out their standard response with Aneka. They had spent twenty minutes giggling over it, actually. ‘We can fit you out with all the latest equipment, no trouble at all.’

‘You can?’

‘Hmm, yes. Of course there is the contract you’ll have to sign.’

‘The… contract?’

‘Yes. It’s nothing too terrible. Obviously if we’re refitting your ship we want to see some return on the investment.’

‘I…’

‘Seventy-five per cent of your haul on any given operation.’ Nash’s eyes bulged. ‘You’ll be directed to appropriate targets by War. She has a list of approved aims she’s working to. It should make sure that the Pinnacle is kept on the wrong foot.’

‘Uh…’

‘And the new computer system will come with an AI to ensure that you keep within operational parameters and carry out the security mandate if necessary.’

‘Security mandate?’

‘Hmm, yes, well, we can’t have the Pinnacle getting their hands on this tech, can we?’

‘Uh, no?’

‘Quite. So if you’re boarded, the ship will self-destruct. You’ll take a lot of Pinnacle troops with you when you go. That’ll be quite something, won’t it?’

‘Uh… yeah. Look, maybe we can get by with a few standard repairs.’

Ella frowned at him. ‘You’re quite sure? We don’t want to send you out there practically unarmed. We can–’

‘I think we’ll manage,’ Nash said firmly. ‘I’ll see to getting the Carpathia docked for transport.’

‘Well… okay,’ Ella replied, trying her best to sound reluctant.

‘How did Nash take it?’ Aneka said into her head.

‘About as well as the last three.’

‘Did he go an odd shade of grey?’

‘No. He did go whiter when I told him about the percentage.’

‘This one’s going purple!’

Ella bit her lips to suppress a giggle. ‘Keep him going! I want to see this one.’ And she hurried off through the hangar bay corridors hoping Aneka would not be finished before she got there.

Hope of Sanctuary, 20.1.560 FSC.

The Hope of Sanctuary was a fair-sized vessel, but beside the wormhole transport ship which it was about to be docked with it was a midget. The huge, white-hulled vessel filled the view as Tebbot steered them in towards the largest of the three hangar bays.

‘Nice and easy, Mister Tebbot,’ Kade said. ‘We don’t want to scratch that paintwork.’

‘I think it would be us getting scratched, Captain,’ Tebbot replied, grinning.

‘Then we don’t want to scratch our paintwork. There’s plenty of time. Ease her in.’

‘Warp exit detected,’ Mags said, her tone flat. ‘Two more.’

‘Lent, get on to the Hyde and ask if–’

‘They’ve detected them,’ Lent said.

‘Range, Mags?’

‘Just over a light second. They’re in range for firing solutions with their main guns if they’re cruisers.’

‘Tell the Hyde we’re going to engage, Lent. All hands, battle stations. Put us in a defensive formation compared to the transport, get a firing solution plotted and start shooting!’

‘Forward turret coming to bear,’ Alderney stated.

‘Let’s hope we’re doing some damage.’

Gwy.

‘The lead cruiser is damaged,’ Gwy said as they accelerated towards the three Pinnacle ships. ‘However, return fire from the other vessels has severely damaged the Hope.’

Aneka watched the readouts hanging around her and nodded. ‘Instruct the drones to attack. Give them something else to worry about. Hold off until we’re closer before we open up.’

‘Orders sent, Aneka.’

Suddenly the force screens on the cruisers were flaring as eight tiny craft opened fire. The small, cloaked ships were hard targets, but they were no real match for the force screens on the cruisers.

‘When they can, target the rear hull sections. They have light armour there and if we concentrate fire, we may be able to breach the hull.’

‘Yes, Aneka.’

‘But I’m counting on you to shoot straight, Gwy. Your main gun is the best chance we have under the circumstances.’

‘I will do my best, Aneka, as the second best ship in the galaxy.’

‘First. Now prove me right.’

Hope of Sanctuary.

‘Main gun-focussing system is down,’ Cubby yelled over the intercom from engineering. ‘We’ve lost it completely. Forward hull armour took severe damage. We’re lucky we haven’t lost more.’

‘See if you can do anything to get it back,’ Kade snapped. ‘It looks like the drone ships are keeping them occupied for now.’

‘I’ll see what I can do, but the blast doors in that section have sealed. I think it’s a total loss.’

‘Yeah, well when we get where we’re going, I’ll buy you a newer toy. For now we need to keep them off the transport.’

‘Captain,’ Mags said, sounding puzzled, ‘the energy signature on one of the cruisers just dropped to next to nothing. It looks like their reactor has gone down.’

Kade grinned. ‘Looks like Gwy has got there then.’

Gwy.

A bright light flared to Aneka’s right and she glanced that way. A lucky shot had hit one of the drones and it was now a rapidly expanding ball of plasma and fragments. She shifted trajectory, swinging through a high-G turn which would bring Gwy around for her next shot.

‘My first target is running on auxiliary power,’ Gwy said. ‘The drones are having increasing difficulty in evading fire, but we are still undetected.’

‘Bringing us around for another shot. I want all of them powered down, if possible. Then Ana can use some of those nukes she’s got stowed away. Assuming she still has functional launchers.’

‘Firing… now.’

Aneka watched as the guns went silent and the force screen died on the second of the three cruisers. ‘Order the drones to attack the rear hulls of the two disabled ships. Now!’ She looped up and around, aware that she should be feeling a lot of force, but it was dampened by the suppressor system and masked entirely by the virtual environment. ‘Last one and we’re home free. More or less.’

Hope of Sanctuary.

‘Target that downed ship,’ Kade ordered.

‘My thought exactly,’ Alderney replied, his hands moving over the controls of his gunnery station.

‘I’m detecting missile launches from all three vessels,’ Mags said. ‘And the shields on the third ship just went down.’

‘Mid batteries to point defence,’ Kade said. ‘Do we know what they’re targeting?’

‘The transport, from the look of it.’

‘Shit! Tell everyone they can’t miss.’

‘I’m getting a message through from Gwy,’ Lent said. ‘It says, “Nuke the bastards.” I think she was relaying it from Aneka, because that doesn’t sound like an AI.’

‘You haven’t met Gwy. Missile rooms, get those nukes ready. I want them launched ASAP.’

Gwy.

‘The drones are engaging the missiles being launched from the cruisers,’ Gwy said. ‘I anticipate none of the weapons reaching their target.’

‘Good. Did Kade get the message?’

‘Yes. I am detecting missile launches from the Hope.’

‘Right. I think we should be elsewhere when those things hit their targets.’

‘That would be wise, Aneka.’

Grinning, Aneka pulled her ship around and headed off in the direction of the transports and the Hope. ‘Told you you were the best.’

‘Would you accept a joint placing?’

‘I think I can live with that.’

Wormhole Junction.

‘She’s going to need a lot of work,’ Cubby said morosely. He was looking out at the forward hull of the Hope of Sanctuary as she hung in dock on one of the orbitals. He was right too.

Sections of plating were gone, ripped open and lost to space. The damage extended deep into the hull where the focussing system of the main gun was now little more than melted metal. The ship looked in a bad way and her captain was looking a little as though she wanted to cry, but would not do so in front of anyone.

‘I think,’ Winter said, ‘that we can accommodate you. Considering the fact that you were defending one of our transports when she was damaged.’

‘I am not sanctioning the repair of that main gun,’ War said. The assembly in the room looked at her, surprised by the outburst. ‘Antiparticle beams? Please! We’ll rip the whole thing out and replace it with something effective. While we’re at it, we might as well replace those X-ray beams. I wouldn’t wish to do half a job. And Reality is up in arms over that drive system. It cannot be allowed, he says. It will all have to go. I believe some retraining will be in order, Mister Cubbington. I hope you won’t mind working with our technicians on the refit?’

The small man’s face slowly cracked into a broad grin, but then he straightened it and replied gruffly, ‘I’m sure it won’t be too much of an inconvenience.’

‘Working with the brightest engineers in the galaxy?’ Kade said. ‘Oh the trials you have to go through, Cubby.’

‘Aye, I live to suffer.’

New Haven, 23.1.560 FSC.

There were still buildings under construction in some sections of the town. Mostly those were businesses, or would become them; all the housing had been completed and people were moving into blocks of flats and family houses.

‘I have a house!’ Trin enthused, bouncing on the spot. This was normally quite impressive, but in the lower gravity she was clearing half a metre just pushing off from her toes. ‘A whole house! All to myself!’

Ella giggled. ‘Your tail can have one of the spare rooms.’

‘Damn tail gets to stay with me whether it likes it or not. Oh yes you do. No, we aren’t putting it to a vote.’

Kade was grinning. ‘I swear her tail will ask for a divorce one day. But this is all a pretty big step up from the old place.’ They were walking down the wide main street of the town. It was lined with currently unoccupied shop outlets. Or mostly unoccupied: there were a couple set up to provide furniture and clothes which a few AI drones were manning. ‘You know a couple of my crew are asking to leave.’

‘They are?’ Aneka asked.

‘Farmers. Or they were farmers before the Pinnacle kicked them off their land and now they have the chance to go back to farming. I’m not going to deny them. Don’t need crew with something better to do, and the refit gives me time to find replacements.’

‘It’s all going to be a lot of change,’ Cassandra said. ‘Do you think they’re up to it?’

‘It might come as a bit of a shock to the pirates, but the rest of the people… I think this is what they needed. It’s a real world they can call home. This is the Haven they should have had from the beginning.’

Part Nine: Bright Light of the Sun

Shadataga, 1.2.560 FSC.

Ella took a drink, savoured the taste of the whiskey and the burn as it ran down her throat, and then she said, ‘I’ve been thinking.’

‘I like it when you do that,’ Aneka replied. ‘Your mind is one of your most attractive features.’

‘I think my boobs have it beat, but okay.’

‘What have you been thinking about?’

‘A sabbatical.’

‘Okay…’

‘I’ve been doing this for thirty years, running the department. My field time has got less and less. I’ve neglected… lots of things, but especially us.’

‘We’re both guilty of a little of that.’

‘Maybe, but I’m the one who went off and had an affair, so I get more blame. I don’t think you’ve punished me enough yet, by the way.’

Aneka smirked. ‘I’ll hang you on the wall in a bit and we can test the soundproofing.’

‘A good start. Anyway, I thought maybe we could take a sabbatical. There are a bunch of worlds out beyond Old Earth we’ve heard have interesting ruins on them. We could take Gwy, take a year, go out and see whether there really is anything worth looking at.’

‘All right. We’ll talk to Gwy about it in the morning.’

‘No we won’t.’

‘No?’

‘Oh no,’ Ella replied, ‘not if you’re going to punish me properly. I expect to sleep in.’

2.2.560 FSC.

‘I think it sounds like a very interesting idea,’ Gwy said. Her image was being projected into the apartment’s lounge using holographic emitters around the room. All the apartments had them now and the only reason Aneka had never had them installed aboard Gwy was that they were not really needed most of the time. ‘Aggy will discuss it with Captain Drake.’

‘I don’t understand why Aggy needs to–’ Ella began.

‘Because I do not have the laboratory facilities you may need. I will make an exceptionally serviceable shuttle and allow the use of more survey probes since fewer transports will be required. And she would like to go.’

Ella frowned. ‘I can’t take Aggy on a silly little field trip like this.’

‘I suggest,’ Gwy said mysteriously, ‘that you discuss that with Captain Drake.’

~~~

‘Aggy’s been a bit… unsettled for a while,’ Drake said as he poured out glasses of shinishee.

‘She’s bored,’ Shannon supplied.

‘It’s not like we get to do much survey and scientific work ourselves,’ Drake went on. ‘She’s almost a glorified transport. The analysis work we did on that cluster fuck on Lacora was the most science she’s been asked to perform in… well, a while, and even then it was mostly data collection so that the main work could be done here.’

‘But she’s your ship!’ Ella protested.

‘Huh, when I get to fly her. Which is once in a month if I’m lucky. I’d consider going with you, but I’ve just committed to some work out in Torem space. So that’s another reason for Aggy to sit in the dock bored. No, you’re both excellent pilots, and Aggy is quite capable of running the ship herself. Gopi, she took the qualifying exams to be a ship’s master a couple of years ago and I know she keeps up on the regulations. Even if you would be outside of controlled space anyway, you’d be entirely legal as far as operations are concerned.’

‘We can’t take a huge ship like Aggy out for just us and Gwy.’

‘I don’t see why not, but if it bothers you, get a team together.’

‘Abby was saying she could do with a break,’ Shannon said. ‘I was talking to her last week and she’s getting tired of all the diplomatic crap she has to put up with. Some of those worlds you’re talking about could have people on them. You’ll need a diplomat.’

Aneka shook her head, grinning. ‘All right, we’ll talk to Abby.’

~~~

‘Oh yes please,’ Abby said as she poured coffee. She was just out of bed and dressed in a light, silky robe. When Aneka and Ella had arrived, she had greeted them warmly and then shoed a rather well-endowed young Jenlay Aneka recognised from the student roster out of her bedroom.

Abigail Linden was fifty now, not that you could tell. The surface Humans of Old Earth did not have the genetic longevity of their city-dwelling cousins, but medical science did not really require it to keep you looking young. She had aged a little, but she was still the fresh-faced girl they had met in Matlock where she had tended the guest cottages. Her attitude had changed more than her looks. She was a far more cosmopolitan woman now; she had been married to a Jenlay for fifteen years before they had separated by mutual consent, and since then she had had a string of lovers, both male and female. Far from the timid maid she had been, Abby was now a confident, strong woman and an exceptionally good ambassador.

‘If I have to listen to one more Herosian explain that a contract for peanuts is vital to the economic viability of his entire region,’ she went on, ‘there is going to be a major diplomatic incident involving the rectal insertion of a tent pole.’

‘Well, we’ve all felt like that about Herosians,’ Aneka said, ‘but peanuts? They’re carnivores.’

‘Apparently “carnivore” is a matter of degree and most need some supplemental vegetable matter. Herosians found out about peanuts, which are apparently perfect for them and they love the taste. Satay sauce is apparently the new taste sensation to garnish your meat with.’

‘Huh. I like satay. It’s hard to believe I have that in common with the Herosians, but you’d be interested in coming with us?’

‘Hell yes! Conrad has been almost begging for more responsibility, and he’s a good diplomat. He’ll need some assistance, but I have my staff well trained. It’ll take a month or so to get things organised though.’

‘Oh, I think we all have a few arrangements to make before we can go,’ Ella said.

‘Yeah,’ Aneka put in, ‘Cassandra is going to talk to Abraham later. She needs to persuade him that he can live without her for that long. That could easily take a couple of months.’

‘Oh, of course,’ Ella said, ‘Cassandra will want to come. This is turning into an expedition.’

3.2.560 FSC.

‘I have a shortlist of seventeen who would like the chance to go,’ Gillian said. ‘I think you should consider all of them carefully, though it’s obviously up to you how many you take.’

‘You know,’ Ella said, sounding a little sullen, ‘this started out as me and Aneka, and Gwy, and Cassandra would probably want to go, and that was going to be it.’

‘There is plenty of room on the Amethyst Hyde. You’ll be able to fuck each other’s brains out in solitude and have a proper team when it gets to the working parts. If you get somewhere and find something really interesting, you know you won’t want to leave the job half-finished.’

‘Well… yes…’

‘So you go over the profiles and make sure no one is going to irritate you. These are good people with little field experience. You’ll be doing the University a service and getting your break.’

‘We’re going to need a couple of good facilitators with a team that size,’ Aneka commented. ‘Especially an inexperienced team. I’ll go over my lists and find some.’ She looked over at Ella who was sagging a little. ‘Two will be enough. So that limits your team size to fourteen given the cabins available on Aggy.’

‘Okay,’ Ella said. ‘I’ll go over the profiles and see who we have.’

18.2.560 FSC.

‘How long ago did they arrive?’ Aneka asked, watching the display hanging over the operations room’s central table.

‘Thirty-two minutes,’ War said. ‘Three of the dreadnoughts and fifteen cruisers.’

‘Wow,’ Kade said, watching the dots representing the Pinnacle fleet as they swarmed through the Haven system, concentrating on Pirate Cove. ‘They really didn’t like losing those ships.’

‘Their first act was to destroy the weapons systems on Pirate Cove. They have been systematically relieving the system of all defences and then boarding the asteroid stations since then.’

‘This is real time?’

‘It is,’ Winter said. ‘We have a probe in the system and we’ve been running a comms wormhole out to it for ten days. Frankly, I’m glad they’ve finally arrived because watching for them was getting tedious.’

‘Have you fired it?’ Aneka asked, looking at the tall form of War.

‘Eight minutes ago.’

‘Fired what?’ Kade asked, looking between them.

Aneka smiled. ‘Let’s just say that in just over two minutes, those guys are going to have a really bad day. And I hope you didn’t leave anything back there that you wish you’d brought with you.’

DN-004, Haven System.

‘The place is empty?’ Colonel Drovari sounded as though he could not really believe what his assault teams were telling him.

‘There’s no one here, Colonel,’ said the voice on the other end of the comms channel. ‘They seem to have all left. Every last one of them. There are ships in the bays, small craft, an old freighter, but there are no people here of any kind.’

‘You checked for the operative?’

‘Yes, sir. She was either spaced or taken with them.’

Drovari gave a grunt and cut the channel off. Where could the entire population of Haven have got to? The message they had received had been short and unclear, but it had indicated that Kade was alive and knew what was going on. Cruisers had been dispatched and they had vanished…

‘Sir?’ It was the sensor operator. ‘I’m getting some… unusual readings.’

‘Quantify that statement, Ensign.’

‘There was a brief gravimetric distortion. Now the gamma radiation level on the hull is increasing.’ A shudder ran through the ship and he added, ‘Further gravitational effects, sir.’

‘Give me a view of the outside. Pan across the stations. Something has to be attacking us.’

‘Gamma radiation continuing to increase. Visible spectrum levels increasing.’

The view screen taking up one wall showed black space with a few tiny dots in it which were asteroids. As it panned around, however, the background light increased and filters cut in to dim the glare.

‘Oh my God,’ Drovari breathed as Pirate Cove came into view, a black shape in sharp relief compared to the star behind it which was now glowing at several times the brightness it had a moment ago. ‘Get us out of here!’

The light from the star just continued to grow.

Shadataga.

‘And there goes the probe,’ Winter sighed.

‘I don’t get it,’ Kade said. ‘What did you do?’

‘Can I do this one?’ Aneka asked. ‘I actually understood this.’

‘Be my guest,’ War replied, smiling.

‘Okay. So the wormholes we use for transport are held stable by something called a string. It’s a special kind of… cosmic particle that crosses dimensions. It has no thickness, just a length, and it’s very massive.’

‘With you so far,’ Kade told her.

‘Great. Obviously, there’s a fair amount of gravitation associated with one of those. That’s why we need the shielding on the transports. Wormholes are traversable without it, but your ship might come out the other end in bits.’ She took a deep breath. ‘One way you get a supernova is if a star becomes so massive that it can’t hold its own weight up against the force of gravity. The star collapses and then explodes. And if you drop the terminus of a wormhole into the centre of a star…’

Kade was whiter than usual. ‘You can collapse the core and the star goes supernova.’

‘Technically not,’ War said. ‘There is insufficient mass to produce a true supernova, but the localised effect is sufficiently similar that we don’t exactly worry about it. Or I don’t. Try not to suggest that it is around Reality. Anyway, the result is a tremendous burst of electromagnetic radiation and following that… Well, if those ships have survived the gamma burst and the thermal effect, in a little over ninety minutes they will be hit by a large amount of the star’s outer layers travelling at about ten per cent of the speed of light.’

‘You people really can blow up stars.’

‘Yes, so try not to get on their bad side,’ Aneka suggested.

~~~

‘So, we sent our message,’ Ella said as she lay in bed beside Aneka. ‘Which was basically “We’re bigger and meaner than you, back off.” What do you think they’ll do?’

‘Well, I hope they’ll back off.’

‘But you don’t think they will?’

‘I’m not sure their pride will let them back down so easily.’ Aneka gave a little shrug, careful not to displace Ella’s head. ‘They may be more practical than I think.’

‘No… I think you’re right. They’ll at least put up a show of defiance. I wonder what it’ll be.’

20.2.560 FSC.

‘We have received a message via our contacts on Oberian,’ Speaker said to the people assembled in the room. ‘I would welcome your opinion.’

‘From?’ Aneka asked.

‘Jaden Howell Lucifent, the fourth. He’s the current Pinnacle Commander, which is their head of state. I believe, Aneka, that you would refer to him as a dictator.’

‘Not winning me over so far.’

‘Well… “It is the wish of the Advisory Council of the Pinnacle Sovereignty that a diplomatic discourse be reached with the entity known as the Collective. In furtherance of this goal, we request a preliminary meeting between leaders of our respective nations to take place in the Oberian system, which is neutral ground.” It goes on to mention an old mining station in the asteroid belt which has sufficient space around it to preclude sneak attacks and sufficient privacy to avoid entanglements with the Oberian governments. Comments?’

‘I hate diplomatic-speak,’ Abby said.

‘You’re a diplomat,’ Ella pointed out.

‘That’s why I hate it, and that was really flowery diplomatic for “We don’t want to admit we’re fucked, please talk to us.”’

‘Yes,’ Aneka agreed, ‘but… Have they set a date for the meeting?’

‘The twentieth of next month, or their equivalent,’ Speaker told her. ‘Thirty days from now.’

‘Just about doable on a fast ship. They’re expecting to see our head of state, or a high-ranking politician. “Leaders of our respective nations.”’

‘No one sends their head of state to something like that,’ Abby stated. ‘An ambassador of some sort, maybe a politician.’

‘Yes, but that’s what they’re asking for.’

Ella sighed. ‘It’s a trap, isn’t it? We sent them a message, killed some of their troops, and they want to send Speaker home in a body bag.’

‘Me?’ Speaker said.

‘Well, you’re the closest thing we have to a head of state, and you do look the part. You know, well dressed, distinguished, kind of sexy for an older guy…’

Speaker coughed. ‘Point made, Miss Narrows. Thank you. Have we any suggestions as to the proceedings from here?’

‘We give them what they want,’ Aneka said, ‘more or less.’

Mining Station 23, Oberian System, 20.3.560 FSC.

Harolt Perinot walked into the mess hall of the mining station with a quiet confidence. The Collective contingent had not arrived, everything had been prepared beforehand, and there were four-armed Pinnacle soldiers behind him to make sure everything went off without a hitch.

He sat down at the only table in the room and waited. They had stripped out all the other tables, which gave it more of a conference room look but also cleared any fields of fire. Now it was just a matter of time. His instructions indicated that the Collective representatives would turn up, but if they did not, well, it was an indication that these people were in need of a proper education of what it was to mess with the Pinnacle.

‘Warp exit detected, sir.’ The voice in his ear came from the comms officer of the cruiser he had arrived on. ‘Single location. Small craft, no more than one hundred tonnes. It’s got some good engines though. Expect their arrival in three minutes.’

Perinot tapped his earpiece. ‘Understood. Stand by. We don’t believe they’ll try anything violent, but you never can tell with these inferiors.’ He closed the connection. ‘You heard him. Three minutes. Stand ready.’

Behind him there was the sound of men checking magazines. They were using old-fashioned caseless projectile weapons with expanding-head rounds. They were quite lethal to unarmoured targets, but there was no risk of them punching through the relatively thin hull of the station. Of course, that was all purely for self-defence.

At three minutes, forty seconds, the door at the other side of the hall opened and Perinot did a double-take. A tall, strongly built but stunning woman with short, white hair walked through the door and paused, examining the room. She was wearing knee-high boots, lightly armoured, a short jacket, and a black unitard which was translucent enough that he could see the shadows of her breasts through it. She seemed to be unarmed, though there could have been a weapon in her jacket.

Apparently satisfied, she stepped forward and then to the side, leaning against a wall and crossing her arms. A far shorter, older man walked through after her. He was aging, very distinguished with white, receding hair and a hooked nose. He wore an old-style, classic double-breasted suit, all white, and he walked with a cane which he did not seem to need. An affectation then.

‘Good afternoon,’ the man in white said, ‘I am True Congress of the Mind Comes Through Understanding, but you may call me Speaker. I represent the Collective, but I am the joint Dean of the University at Shadataga.’

‘Colonel Harolt Perinot of the Pinnacle Military,’ Perinot replied. He did not get up or offer a hand, but he said, ‘Please, take a seat. We have much to discuss.’

‘We do?’ Speaker asked, taking the seat opposite the colonel. ‘Then I would be interested to know why I am speaking to a colonel. The message we received from your commander stated that “leaders of our nations” should meet.’

‘Quite. I represent–’

‘The Pinnacle has a highly structured social order based largely upon military rank. You are quite highly ranked, Colonel, but hardly sufficiently high up the chain to represent the Pinnacle. Are you attempting to waste my time, Colonel Perinot?’

‘No. We wish to send a clear message to your Collective and I have been chosen to deliver it.’ There were three loud bangs and Speaker slumped forward in his seat, head banging on the table as he fell. Perinot pulled the pistol he was holding from under the table and aimed it at the woman. There was the clatter of arms being shouldered behind him as the four guards made their carbines ready. ‘You will be delivering that message, along with this… corpse.’ He frowned. Why was the woman looking so calm?

‘I’m Aneka,’ Aneka said, uncrossing her arms and pushing away from the wall. ‘Aneka Jansen. Best to remember the names of those you’re threatening.’

‘Well, Jansen, I suggest–’

‘Why did you do that? Are you actually trying to start a war?’

‘The Pinnacle does not scare easily. We analysed your attack. You had significant time to install the device you used to detonate that star, and you cleared the civilians from the system before you set it off. You wouldn’t use it on an inhabited system. Oh, you’ll kill a few soldiers, but–’

‘Do shut up. Speaker? Are you all right to go back to Gwy?’

Speaker pulled himself upright and gave her a smile. ‘I believe so, Aneka. Thank you for your concern.’ He climbed to his feet and the damaged circuitry in his stomach became visible.

‘You… You’re a robot?!’ Perinot said.

‘An autonomous android construct,’ Speaker replied, ‘running a fragmentary form of my primary program.’ He looked at Aneka. ‘I must say I begin to see why Winter finds this so attractive. There is a limitation to the reduced form which makes one feel more…’

‘Human?’ Aneka suggested.

‘Perhaps. I’ll see you back on board.’ Turning, he walked back through the door they had entered by, ignoring the men aiming guns at him.

‘Okay,’ Aneka said, walking over and sitting down on the edge of the table. ‘Yes, he’s a fragment of one of the AIs who basically run the Collective. Even if you’d managed to trash that body, you’d have been killing… a clone.’

‘You’re ruled over by machines?’ Perinot asked, disgust evident in his voice.

‘Not really. They run things. They make sure the place works. All the governments of the Collective retain their sovereignty. Shadataga advises, and it’s generally very good advice, but people are free to ignore it, within certain limitations anyway. We don’t allow the use of our weapons systems, like the one we used on Haven’s star, which required about twenty minutes to initiate, by the way.’

‘Real Humans would never be controlled–’

‘Stop it! The AIs don’t even want to control us, and you’re no more a “real Human” than most of the other offshoots of Humanity that arose after the Xinti War. Most of the people left on Earth have less genetic modification than the Pinnacle. You’re bulked up, your bodies heal faster, and your women are engineered to be beautiful. You turned yourselves into ideal, stereotyped Humans, not “real” ones.’

Perinot’s finger tightened on the trigger. Aneka watched him for a second and then said, ‘That pop-gun is not going to hurt me. I could take every last one of you apart with my bare hands and there’s nothing you could do to stop me, so listen carefully. The people with their fingers on the trigger of that star killer are AIs. They’re nice people, and they detest loss of life. That in itself makes them better than you. However, they tend to work on checks and balances. If wiping out your home star system stops a war before it starts, they will do it. They will turn your Olympus into Hades. So you come no closer to Earth than you have already. If you put up another border station, we will destroy it. If you try to claim another planet this side of the galaxy, we will take out three of your core systems. And stay off Oberian. I already wiped your spies out there. Oh, and I’ve infiltrated two of your border stations and killed everyone in one of them, and I hit your base on Ranson. That was me, on my own, and if I have to come back here to do the work again, I’ll be really pissed off.’

She got to her feet and started for the door. ‘Take that back to your Pinnacle Commander and hope they don’t shoot messengers.’

Shadataga, 21.3.560 FSC.

‘Do you think they’ll accept it?’ Abby asked. They were in the operations room again. Discussing the Pinnacle again.

‘Only time will tell,’ Speaker replied. ‘I believe we have made our point. I suspect they will try to find ways to circumvent our prohibitions.’

‘And I have probes stationed in every strategic system they might decide to move into,’ Winter added. ‘If they make a move, we should know about it.’

‘Ana is going to be gathering intel whenever she can,’ Aneka said. ‘She’ll funnel that back to us when she gets it.’

Abby grinned. ‘Not us, exactly.’

‘Winter,’ Aneka amended. ‘We will be out of the picture for a while. You’re sure you can manage without us, Winter?’

‘I managed for five hundred years before you were available,’ the AI replied. ‘I should be able to handle things. Besides, if they do get out of hand, we promised them rather more drastic action than you can provide. It’ll be down to War and Reality.’

‘Do you have a plan for where you’ll go first?’ Speaker asked.

‘We’re going out as far as we can by wormhole,’ Ella said. ‘There’s a system we got wind of that sounds promising. Then we’ll work our way back the slow way. If we need to change plans, we’re going to have wormhole check-ins every couple of weeks while we’re in a system so we can inform you, and if we’re really needed back here, you should know where we’ll be.’

‘Only in dire emergency,’ Winter said. ‘I’m going to miss you all, even if I can handle things without you.’

‘At least it won’t be a thousand years before we see each other again this time,’ Aneka said.

‘It better not be.’

‘I just jinxed this entire thing, didn’t I?’

‘You’d better not have.’

G9972 System, 5th Planet, 1.4.560 FSC.

Gwy glided delicately into a landing in the clearing which occupied the centre of the island. It was not fully dark: light was showing in the sky to the west where the local sun would be rising shortly, and the trees were an iridescent purple which would lighten a little in daylight.

Aneka and Ella stepped out onto grass which was a deeper red. The local flora had a large quantity of a protein which absorbed heavily in the blue-and-green spectrum which tended to make it red or purple in colour. It looked alien, which was just fine by them.

Cassandra had more or less insisted that they go down to the planet alone. They had wanted to be the first ones down. Officially it was an initial survey to determine how to use the other team members, but really it was just to be there, by themselves, on a brand new world. Cassandra counted as one of them, but she had said she would supervise on the ship and that Aneka and Ella deserved this one to themselves. Even Al was staying quiet.

‘This way,’ Ella said, noting the schematic of the island in her vision field and starting off through the trees. Gwy’s quick scan of the place, a mid-sized lump of rock in the middle of an ocean which covered more or less the entire planet, had revealed some interesting shapes among the trees. They were all around them, but the largest grouping was dead ahead.

Even in the early hours it was not cold. The world had conditions very close to those of Earth: about five per cent more gravity and a small commensurate increase in air pressure, and a closer orbit around a slightly cooler star. Ella had decided to screw both official protocols and past history and was dressed in a cropped T-shirt and shorts because when the sun came up it was going to get fairly humid among the trees.

They stopped as they came face-to-face with a huge, carved stone statue hidden among the trees. It was maybe two metres high and vaguely reptilian, though it was difficult to tell because it was badly weathered. There was a suggestion of a broad muzzle and eyes set wide apart on the head, thickly muscled arms and legs, and a stocky body.

‘This is old,’ Aneka said. ‘That looks like granite and it doesn’t weather fast.’

Ella took a handheld scanner from her belt and scanned it over the statue. ‘Preliminary results, of course, but it was probably carved over fifty thousand years ago. It’s well pre-Human civilisation.’

‘This place wasn’t a colony then.’

‘Sparse land and pretty average mineral resources, not exactly a prime candidate for a colony. And it’s a long way from Old Earth.’

‘Two hundred and twenty-five parsecs, give or take. How did we find out about this place anyway?’

‘Believe it or not, it was in some Pinnacle records. They looked it over, noted the ruins and the difficulty in extracting minerals and decided it wasn’t worth the bother.’

‘Oh, so they are useful for something then?’

‘Everything’s useful for something, even if it’s just recycling.’ Ella set off past the statue.

Aneka followed behind. ‘Maybe, though I’ve never been sure about lawyers.’

Ella giggled, but they were coming across more stones now and her more professional brain was taking an interest. ‘Looks like they were buildings, once. I assume they’re contemporary with the statue so it’s not a major surprise they’ve collapsed.’

‘There looks like there are more upright stones just ahead.’

Pushing through a small group of bushes revealed a structure, maybe three metres high and broad. The formation suggested that it had been the base of something larger.

‘Step pyramid, maybe,’ Aneka suggested. ‘Like in South America.’

‘It’s a relatively stable design.’

‘The pyramids in Egypt lasted a good few thousand years. Nothing like fifty, but quite a while. I wonder if they’re still standing.’

‘Maybe Abby knows. Boost me up. I want to get a look at the top.’

Each layer was a metre high and Ella could have managed herself, but Aneka was the easy option, and anyway, it felt rather good being lifted up by her. A minute of giggling and clambering and they were on the upper platform, which was strewn with rocks and a couple of large pieces which were likely masonry, and they were level with the tops of the trees. Aneka looked out towards the west as Ella scanned over the platform, doing a first-stage mapping as well as a basic analysis.

‘It is basically granite. Cutting that must have been fun. The technology doesn’t look excessively sophisticated.’

In the west the sky was brightening more, a telltale glow suggesting that the sun was about to break over the horizon.

‘We’ll get everyone down here while the drones do a proper planetary survey,’ Ella continued. ‘That should make an interesting–’ She stopped as she felt Aneka’s body against her back. ‘That feels nice.’

Aneka turned, pulling Ella around with her, and then lowered them both down to the rock platform. When they were sitting, Aneka’s thighs around Ella’s hips, Aneka slid her hands over Ella’s bare stomach and whispered, ‘Just sit and watch. Don’t think.’

Ella put her scanner down and looked up at the growing light. ‘I can do that.’

There were particulates in the upper atmosphere. The scanners had noted them in passing as Gwy had flown in, but they cleared lower down and had not been a concern. Now, as the first sharp spark of light flared over the horizon, they turned it into a brilliant red flame. The thick, glossy leaves on the trees went from a deep purple to a redder, fiery colour as though the whole island was alight.

‘Oh…’ Ella breathed. Aneka’s hands slid up under her top and she gasped.

‘Sometimes,’ Aneka said, ‘you have to sit down and just look at what you have around you. Appreciate what’s there without analysing it.’

‘I’m appreciating a lot right now, but if you keep doing that, I’m going to want to do very unprofessional things on an archaeological site.’

Aneka shifted her hands, lifting the T-shirt up and over Ella’s head. The sunlight was warm on her skin and she sighed. ‘Good,’ Aneka said softly.

###

About the Author

I was born in the vicinity of Hadrian's Wall so perhaps a bit of history rubbed off. Ancient history obviously, and border history, right on the edge of the Empire. I always preferred the Dark Ages anyway; there’s so much more room for imagination when people aren’t writing down every last detail. So my idea of a good fantasy novel involved dirt and leather, not shining plate armour and Hollywood-medieval manners. The same applies to my sci-fi, really; I prefer gritty over shiny.

Oddly, then, one of the first fantasy novels I remember reading was The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper (later made into a terrible juvenile movie). These days we would call Cooper’s series Young Adult Contemporary Fantasy and looking back on it, it influenced me a lot. It has that mix of modern day life, hidden history, and magic which failed to hit popular culture until the early days of Buffy and Anne Rice. Of course, Cooper’s characters spend their time around places I could actually visit in Cornwall, and South East England, and mid-Wales. In fact, when I went to university in Aberystwyth, it was partially because some of Cooper’s books were set a few miles to the north around Tywyn.

I got into writing through roleplaying, however, so my early work was related to the kind of roleplaying game I was interested in. I wrote science fiction when I was playing Traveller. I wrote “high fantasy” when I was playing Dungeons & Dragons. I wrote a lot of superhero fiction when I was playing City of Heroes. I still love the idea of a modern world with magic in it and I’ve been trying to write a novel based on this for a long time. As with any form of expression, practice is the key and I can look back on all the aborted attempts at books, and the more successful short stories, as steps along the path to the Thaumatology Series.

Writing, sadly, is not my main source of income. By day, I’m a computer programmer. I work for a telecommunications company in Manchester, England. My favourite authors are Terry Pratchett, Susan Cooper, and (recently) Kim Harrison. Kim’s Hollows books were what finally spurred me to publish something, even if the trail to here came by way of Susan, back in school, several decades ago.

For More Information

The Thaumatology Blog: http://thaumatology.wordpress.com

The Steel Beneath the Skin Blog: http://steelbeneaththeskin.wordpress.com

Other Books by this Author

See amazon.com/author/niallteasdale.

The Thaumatology Series

Thaumatology 101

Demon’s Moon

Legacy

Dragon’s Blood

Disturbia

Hammer of Witches

Eagle’s Shadow

Ancient

Dragonfall

The Other Side of Hell

For Whom the Wedding Bells Toll

Vengeance

Anthologies in the Thaumatology Universe

Tales from High Towers’ Study

Tales from the Dubh Linn

The Aneka Jansen Books

Steel Beneath The Skin

The Cold Steel Mind

Steel Heart

The Winter War

The Greatest Heights of Honour

The Lowest Depths of Shame

The Ultrahuman Books

Ugly

The Unobtainium Books

Kate on a Hot Tin Roof