The Winter War (13 page)

Aneka grinned. ‘She’s going into
cold sleep.’ After her last long trip in the fridge, Delta had said
she would sleep with anyone she needed to to avoid it again. When
the entire crew had wanted in on the action they were teasing, but
she had still decided that she would spend the ninety-eight day
trip back to New Earth dreaming. Most of the crew were joining her
for this leg. Even Ella was going to bed and leaving Aneka as the
only conscious person aboard.

Well, technically there was
Aneka and Aggy. ‘The cold sleep chamber is ready to receive
guests,’ the ship’s computer announced over the speakers in the
cabin. ‘Captain Drake has requested that everyone make their way
there.’

Ella grumbled softly and pulled
Aneka’s arms closer around her. ‘Just once more before bed.’

Aneka sighed. ‘Tell Drake we’ll
be another twenty minutes, Aggy.’

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Aneka walked through the near-silent
ship, wandering the halls for no other reason than that she wanted
to. It was almost silent, but no one else would have been able to
hear the sounds. There was the slight shush of the air moving
through the circulation system and the ultrasonic whine of plasma
passing through the magnetic containment field of the fusion
reactor. The old warp drive had played an ultrasonic duet with the
reactor, but if the new one made a sound it was outside of even
Aneka’s extended range.

And she was never really alone.
Al was with her everywhere she went, monitoring her body and mind
every waking moment. Aggy was, essentially, the entire ship. She
was everywhere there were internal sensors and a set of speakers,
which was everywhere aside from the unpressurised hold. Both of
them knew to stay quiet when Aneka was out for a walk, unless she
spoke to them.

‘Aggy, about two hundred years
ago when you first woke up again and we were trying to repair the
station after those robots sabotaged it…’

‘That was not two hundred years
ago, Aneka,’ the computer responded. She appeared, walking beside
Aneka. Actually just a projection into Aneka’s vision field; that
of a buxom woman with gold skin, silver eyes, and short,
honey-blonde hair.

‘It feels like that long. You
said you’d compiled all the data you collected on me before my
abduction.’

‘I did, yes. I still have the
relevant files awaiting your inspection, if you wish to examine
them.’

‘Yeah, I’d like to look at it. I
think I can cope with it now and… Well, I’m a bit bored and seeing
what someone else thought my life came to should keep me interested
for a while.’

‘Keep in mind that I was
analysing you as a candidate for the Human Evolution Programme, not
as a potential date.’

‘Huh. Well, you got to know my
body more intimately than any date I ever hooked up with.’

Aggy decided that answering that
would likely be a bad idea.

~~~

‘Why did you even have a Facebook page?’
Al asked. ‘You hardly ever updated it. There’s no profession
listed.’

‘Yeah well, putting down
“professional mercenary” seemed like a bad idea. Alan said I should
do it, and I thought it might hook me up with some old school
friends or something. It wasn’t until the page was up I realised I
didn’t have any old school friends I actually wanted to meet.’

‘Did any of them contact
you?’

‘Yeah. Three boys who didn’t
stand a chance back then and wanted to know whether having money
made a difference. The school bitch sent me a message to let me
know she’d become a catwalk model.’ Aneka looked thoughtfully at
the ceiling. ‘Died of an overdose of cocaine about a year
later.’

Her military record was in the
files; everything she had ever done or had been written about her.
‘Some of this stuff is classified, Aggy,’ she commented.

‘Some of it took a lot more
effort to get than other parts,’ Aggy agreed. ‘However, this was
extremely pertinent information to my mission. The extra effort was
necessary, if relatively useless.’

‘Useless?’

‘It was apparent that many of
those handling your performance reviews tended to view political
considerations for your advancement over your actual
capabilities.’

‘Right. I haven’t even seen some
of this stuff. There’s that psychological evaluation they did. The
one that said I was psychotic because I wanted to be in a combat
position.’

‘And you never got to see
it?’

‘No. One of my COs gave me the
summary. Prick.’

She closed the file and opened
another, which turned out to be a huge database of email messages.
It was a mix of ones she had sent and received, and others which
had been written by others but mentioned her. There were a lot of
them, a really big lot.

‘I could spend months going
through this stuff,’ Aneka said. Then she thought about it and
added, ‘Not that I have a whole lot else to do.’ She clicked a
file.

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‘Solitude isn’t getting to you, is it?’
Drake asked. Mid-flight checks were a requirement on any trip
longer than fifty days. Aneka suspected he was checking on her as
much as on the ship. He was, however, making a show of the latter;
they were walking up to the flight deck.

‘I’m not exactly alone,’ Aneka
replied.

‘No, I suppose not, but you
don’t have another Jenlay awake with you.’

‘True, except that I’m not a
Jenlay, so technically it wouldn’t be
another
Jenlay.’

‘Uh, another… No, person doesn’t
work either because Aggy and Al are sentient…’

Aneka grinned. ‘Another person I
can physically interact with?’

‘That works, I guess, though it
does start to sound kind of trivial.’

‘Huh. I miss Ella. It was the
same on the flight to Earth… Old Earth. Better get used to saying
that again. I never thought I’d ever miss waking up next to a
woman, but I do. It’s okay the first morning. Then on the second I
think, “She’s not going to be there for days,” and after that it’s
every morning. Like there’s a hole in the bed where she should
be.’

‘I was the same when Shannon was
in hospital.’ They had arrived at the door of the flight deck and
he raised his head to speak to the computer. ‘Captain Drake ready
for in-flight checks.’

‘Of course, Captain,’ Aggy
responded, and the door opened. ‘You know, I could just open the
door for you. There’s no need for that little ritual. I do know
you’re scheduled to make this check.’

‘Humour me, Aggy,’ Drake
replied. ‘I’ve been saying that to get in here mid-flight for quite
a while.’

‘I shall attempt to be
patient.’

Drake grinned, shook his head,
and walked in to sit down on the pilot’s seat. His hands started
moving over the controls as soon as the consoles lit up. Aneka
followed him in, perching on the co-pilot’s seat and pulling up one
leg to rest her chin on.

‘What’ve you been up to?’ he
asked, his attention on the displays appearing in front of him.

‘Reading thousand-year-old
emails.’ He glanced at her, raising an eyebrow. ‘Aggy collected a
load of data on me when they were deciding who to uplift. I’ve been
reading through it. She was exceedingly thorough.’

‘I am always exceedingly
thorough,’ Aggy pointed out.

‘There’s stuff going back to my
first Hotmail account. Armybrat eighty-two. I was feeling
imaginative. Dumped that and got Aneka underscore Jansen when I
went into the Army, and then I dumped that for armybitch at Gmail
when I quit. And she got all of them.’

‘Several of the messages in your
oldest account were very revealing, Aneka. You were something of an
idealist. You thought that you could do something good with your
life by joining the armed forces. The change as you progressed was
noticeable. Particularly in some of the messages sent late in your
second account’s lifespan.’

Aneka gave a shrug. ‘Yeah. Mind
you, there were a few embarrassing moments. I found some emails an
old boyfriend sent me describing, in great detail, what he wanted
to do with me when I came home on leave.’

Drake barked a laugh, his eyes
on a display which was slowly transitioning to show that all the
ship’s systems were working. ‘It’s tough making long-distance
relationships work, but the sex when you meet again…’

‘Not in this case. By the time I
did get home on leave he was fucking a blonde waitress from
Guildford.’ She frowned in contemplation. ‘Maybe that’s why I coped
reasonably well with the attitude to sex Jenlay have. I stopped
believing in long-term relationships before I got stuck in stasis.
Ella’s the longest partnership I’ve ever had. Most lasted a night
or a week at most.’

‘Three-and-a-half years is a
record then?’

‘Hell yeah!’

‘Well, as expected, everything
is fine. Good work, Aggy.’

‘Thank you, Captain,’ Aggy
replied.

‘There’s some food in the mess,’
Aneka said.

‘Thanks. I feel like someone
hollowed out my stomach to make a canoe.’

Sitting in the mess with a bowl
of some sort of pasta dish, Drake breathed in the aroma and sighed.
‘I need this. Isn’t going over this stuff a bit depressing?’ It was
clearly a conversational gambit to keep her talking while he ate.
She was not going to complain.

‘Some of it. Most of it just
reminds me of family and… Well, they were good times. I could get
maudlin over the loss, but I’d rather remember the time I did have
and not worry over what might have been.’

‘Good attitude,’ Drake said
around a mouthful of spaghetti.

‘It’s that or mope in my room a
lot. Not that I leave my cabin much. I mean, there’s not much to
do. Bash left me some chores. There were a few things they didn’t
get to check over on the Harriamon leg so I said I’d finish up. Did
that in a week. I only sleep four hours a night. I don’t like those
terrible sex comedies you people think are so hilarious.’

‘Hilarious is pushing it.’

‘I’m reading through Aggy’s book
collection, but I tend to read fast so I’m trying to pace myself.’
Drake was not pacing himself particularly; his food was almost
gone. Aneka reached to her throat and unsealed her leotard.

Drake sucked in the last strand
of spaghetti, chewed, and then said, ‘Is that an offer?’

‘Maybe even a request.’

He unsealed his shipsuit. ‘You
sure you’re not feeling lonely?’

‘Not lonely.’ She stepped out of
her suit and waited as he stood and slid his down to his thighs
before pushing him back into his chair. ‘But you’re right about
physical contact, I think.’ She straddled his legs, pushed her hips
forward, and sank onto him with a sigh.

Drake let out a groan. ‘You, uh…
You’ve been thinking about this for a while.’

‘Since I woke up.’ She began a
slow rise and fall motion. ‘Well, after I’d got over the missing
Ella thing for the day.’

‘I can… tell.’ After a minute he
added, ‘That is maddening.’

Giggling, Aneka quickened the
pace until she was bouncing madly up and down in his lap and she
could feel her stomach muscles tightening as each bounce drove the
tension higher. Drake had a fondness for enthusiastic sex, which
made Shannon a good match for him since she liked doing it in
inappropriate places. It also made Aneka a good choice for random
encounters since her body could take anything he wanted to throw at
it.

She felt her inner muscles
clenching. ‘Coming…’ She got a groan for a reply and felt him
swelling inside her, and then there was the rush and she threw her
head back and let it wash over her.

‘You… You’re getting… better at
that,’ he commented.

She shifted her hips, eliciting
a moan, and then slid off him with a shudder. ‘Have you ever met
our neighbour, Dillon? He’s a big guy. I’ve had some practice.’ She
dropped into the seat beside his and tossed him a box of wet
wipes.

Drake barked a laugh. ‘I see you
thought of everything. Ella’s getting up early, right?’

‘Fifteen days before we arrive.
Everyone else at five days.’

‘Doesn’t she get enough alone
time with you?’

‘This is Ella we’re talking
about.’

‘You have a point.’ He got to
his feet and pulled his suit back into place with practised ease.
‘Let’s get me back in the freezer and you can get back to your
reading.’

Aneka got to her feet, not
bothering with her own suit, and followed him to the cold sleep
room. It was on a lower deck, at the back of the habitation
section, and it was basically one large room containing eight white
pods. The occupants were filled full of chemicals, which kept their
bodies from dying, and then cooled down well below zero. Body
functions almost ceased, neurological activity fell to not quite
zero; essentially they were in a long, slow sleep.

With Drake back in his pod, she
checked the process to cool him down was starting up correctly and
then turned away. She did not like watching the needles going in,
though Drake was asleep before they did thanks to a sedative gas.
Instead she crossed over to Ella’s pod, checking the readouts even
though she knew Aggy would have alerted her to a problem, just as
she would have alerted her to any flight issues.

‘Al, connect me through to
Ella’s implant. Full sensorium.’ Ella was dreaming about Earth. Old
Earth. Matlock, in fact, or nearby. Walking through a field with
the wind blowing in her hair. Aneka smiled. ‘Okay Al, replay the
physical sensations from that session with Drake. Just touch, none
of the other sensations.’

She had really meant for him to
play them to Ella, but she had to lean over the pod as sex with a
fit Jenlay played through her body. When she came down, Ella’s walk
had been interrupted by a handsome shepherd. Well she was always
bugging Aneka for outdoor sex.

‘Okay, disconnect. God I need a
shower.’

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Aneka closed a rather boring email
someone had sent her accountant regarding her tax assessment. It
had been sent around the time of her kidnapping and it was nice to
know that while she was being dissected on an alien ship, the tax
system had been working properly. Looking at the next message in
the list she frowned.