The Winter War (6 page)

She had cried herself to sleep
the night before. Then she had woken up, found no sign of Aneka in
their bed, and cried some more. Then she had got up, washed her
face, dressed, and walked down the stairs, hoping all the while
that Aneka would be on the couch. When she was not there had been
more tears, and it was hard to make tea through a haze of
water.

She had, she thought,
really
fucked up. Aneka had really been angry. Not the kind
of angry where you were trying to make a point, but real, proper,
‘How could you do this?’ anger. And she was right! Ella knew she
could make excuses for her behaviour, but when it came down to it
they were just excuses. She should have told Abigail to leave as
soon as she saw her. She had
known
she was going to screw up
if the girl stayed…

Ella’s head lifted at the sound
of the front door opening. She held her breath, her heart hammering
in her chest. Then Abigail walked in, stopped briefly to look at
her, and then looked quickly away as she started toward the
kitchen.

Thinking it best, Ella stayed
put. ‘I, uh… I didn’t think I’d see you today, Abigail.’

‘It’s my duty to see to the
houses and the guests in them,’ Abigail replied. ‘Have you
eaten?’

‘I’m not hungry. I could use a
cup of tea. I made one earlier… It’s gone cold.’ Ella swallowed.
‘You haven’t seen Aneka, have you?’

‘Last night. She talked to me.
When I woke up, Dad said she had left town just after dawn.’

Oh Vashma! She’s left me!
‘D-did he say where she was going?’

There was a pause and the sound
of water being run into the kettle. Then, ‘No.’

Ella pulled herself up straight
and forced the tears back. She was not really sure she had any left
to shed anyway. Well, if Aneka had gone then she could at least do
one thing right. Standing up, she walked through to the kitchen
doorway. Abigail looked at her, a flicker of fear in her eyes
before she got it under control.

Ella took a deep breath.
‘Abigail, I’m sorry. I did an absolutely terrible thing last night.
I knew what was going to happen as soon as I saw you, and I should
have told you to go before it did. There was no excuse for it. I
don’t expect you to forgive me, but I want you to know I’m sorry.
I’m… not quite myself at the moment and I’d never normally do
something like that to someone I thought might not like it. I’m
sorry.’

‘But I did like it,’ Abigail
mumbled, turning her back on Ella and watching the kettle boil.

‘Sorry?’

‘I did like it. Even when you
made me lick… I did like it, but it’s wrong and I shouldn’t
have.’

Ella’s brain did a double take.
Abigail was feeling guilty?!
Oh, that just makes it worse!
Ella took a step forward, starting to reach for the girl, then
thought better of it and backed away. ‘Um… Look, Abigail… It’s not
for me to question your beliefs or anything, especially after what
I did, but there’s nothing wrong with enjoying sex, no matter what
gender your partner. It’s the most natural thing in the world.
Humans evolved to enjoy it. Most animals don’t so there has to be a
reason we do, right? I could give you the scientific theories on
it, but the fact is, Humans like sex and there is absolutely no
reason for you to feel guilty about it.’ She sighed. ‘Me, I can
feel guilty about it because I hurt you doing it, but not you.
Okay?’

Abigail turned around again.
Maybe it was the vehemence of the statement, or that the brunette
really wanted to believe what she was hearing, but she managed to
crack a bleak little smile. ‘I… guess.’ The kettle started to
whistle and she took it off the heat quickly. She looked back, eyes
widening. ‘What if I never find a man that can do that to me?’

Ella laughed. ‘I’ve had a lot of
practice. You will. You’ll find some young man and fall in love
with him, and that can make a lot of difference. Believe me.
Aneka’s not as skilled as a lot of people I’ve been with, but the
way I feel about her makes everything…’ Her voice choked off and
she had to swallow hard to force the tears back again. ‘Everything
is better with her.’

~~~

Aneka crouched in a hedge line watching
what had probably once been a small farm complex about one hundred
and twenty metres west of her position through the scope of her
rifle. There had been two large barns there at one time, but they
were now nothing more than the remains of metal frames. There was
also a stone-built farmhouse and that seemed to be the centre of
operations for the little band she was currently assuming had taken
the women.

There were ogres there. She
counted ten, but there might have been a few more. None of them
seemed to be armed with anything more threatening than a pickaxe.
The more worrying thing was the more normal Humans she had spotted.
The two she had seen were dressed in Enforcer armour and carried
the same gravity-pulse weapons she had seen before. Those were
going to be more of an issue and she was not sure even the rifles
explained the broken truck. There had to be something bigger in
there.

‘Al, I’ll need full tactical
analysis running. I’m going to take out as many as I can with the
rifle and then go in with Bessie and Claret.’ Bessie was her
antimatter blaster; Claret was the one machine pistol she had
managed to rebuild from the two matched ones she had. She still had
not named the rifle.

‘Tactical map, such as it is,
compiled,’ Al replied. ‘I’ve marked the visible targets and lines
of sight.’

‘All right, let’s get on with
this. It’s probably going to get messy.’

‘Good luck.’

Aneka sighted up on her first
target, a man in full, black armour and helmet. He was facing away
from her, talking to a pair of ogres. She squeezed off a round, the
air ripped open, and the man fell. Swinging quickly to her next
target she fired again, dropping her second black-clad victim.

There was uproar. The ogres were
clearly not well trained, or even particularly combat ready.
Several let out yells, some started looking around for the shooter.
None of them seemed to have a clue what to do. Swinging her rifle
back, Aneka picked off the two who had been talking to her first
victim, and then swept around for another target.

Someone was more efficient,
however. There was the sound of glass shattering and then something
that felt like a baseball shot out of a canon hit Aneka in the
chest. Warning indicators flashed through her vision field and she
was pushed violently backward. She rolled, coming back up on her
knees and lining up the shot before her attacker could realign his
sights. Through the high-powered scope on her rifle she watched as
his head turned into little more than mush inside his helmet. Then
she ducked back into the hedge, running north through the thick
bushes.

Slinging her rifle, she pulled
her pistols, Bessie in her right hand, Claret in the left, and
pushed back through into the field. There was a shout from her left
side and she swung Claret up, the squad of ogres who had gone out
after her appearing in her in-vision sighting window. She was not
too worried about them, but she laid down an arc of suppression
fire anyway, the machine pistol spitting out hyper-dense darts
which flashed into plasma as they ploughed into flesh. Her
attention was on the house and its windows in case another Enforcer
appeared. None did and she turned her attention on the ogres fully.
Bursts of darts and blasts of anti-protons wiped them out before
they got within fifty metres of her.

She circled the building, found
a door, and fired Bessie into it. Bits of burning wood exploded
into the room beyond and Aneka yelled, ‘If there’s anyone in there
who’d like to get older, I suggest they come out with their hands
raised.’ There was a roar of anger, which very effectively
announced the charging ogre. Aneka shot him in the face. ‘Anyone
else want to be a hero?’

‘Back off, or we kill the
women.’ The voice was amplified and had a synthesized overtone,
which likely identified it as coming from an Enforcer. So there was
one of them alive still at least.

‘If you kill the women there’ll
be nothing stopping me from demolishing the building to get to
you.’

‘You don’t have the
weaponry…’

Aneka fired into the room. It
was a calculated risk, but she figured they had their hostages up
on the second floor where it would be harder to escape. There were
several shouts, a cry of pain.

‘This is an anti-proton blaster,
built by the Xinti. I don’t know whether Manu Dei mentioned them,
but they were damned good at building weapons.’

‘It’s an estimation,’ Al said,
‘but the Enforcer is probably on the left side of the room.’

‘I’ll take your estimation over
anyone else’s facts.’ She fired again, blasting out the window on
the left side and then launching two more rounds in through the new
hole. Twin explosions rocked the room inside. ‘Come out,’ Aneka
yelled. ‘Hands in the air. Or else.’ It sounded really bad once she
had said it, but there was no turning back now.

Besides, it worked. A few
seconds later the ogres, followed by a dazed-looking Enforcer,
walked out of the building, unarmed and with their hands raised.
Aneka backed away slowly, covering them with her weapons as they
went.

‘I’m receiving a transmission
from a Prime City aircraft,’ Al said. ‘It’s Councillor Marsden
requesting coordinates.’

‘Marsden? Okay, well, better
late than never. Send them the coordinates and put her through.’
Marsden’s face appeared in a window in Aneka’s vision field. She
looked rather tense. ‘Councillor, I didn’t know you actually
had
any aircraft.’

‘We don’t,’ Marsden replied,
‘exactly. This was an experimental anti-gravity transport we
developed. I’m not qualified to fly it, but neither is anyone else.
I take it from your composed demeanour that you’ve resolved the
situation without us.’

‘I wouldn’t quite put it that
way. I was really not sure what I was going to do with seven ogres
and an Enforcer, to be honest. Your Citizens likely need medical
help.’

‘We’re en route. We’ll be there
in… two minutes if I can keep this thing in the air that long.’

‘Good,’ Aneka replied, ‘but I’m
driving back.’

~~~

Ella dismissed the text she was reading
in-vision and turned toward the porch door as she heard the outer
one open. She told herself, firmly, that she was expecting Abigail
to walk in, but her breathing stopped anyway as she waited. When
the porch door finally opened a tiny, strangled sob escaped her
anyway.

‘Not quite the greeting I was
expecting,’ Aneka said. She started taking her rifle off her back,
looking quizzically at Ella.

‘I wasn’t sure you were coming
back.’

‘What?’ The rifle was placed on
the floor and she followed it with her gun belts.

‘You were really angry, and you
were right to be, and I made Abigail feel
terrible,
though I
think that’s sorted out now, and you said I cheated on you, and I
sort of did because I knew it was wrong and you wouldn’t approve
and I did it anyway and…’ She had to stop to draw breath which gave
Aneka a point to get in.

‘You talked to Abigail?’

Ella nodded, her eyes fixed on
Aneka. ‘She came over to tidy, would you believe, and I talked to
her, and she was feeling guilty for enjoying the sex, and I told
her she had no reason to feel guilty, and she seemed to accept that
even if she didn’t think she should have done it, and we talked and
I think we kind of made up a bit, and then she went and I’ve been
waiting and you didn’t come back and I didn’t know where you were
and…’

Dumping her jacket, Aneka sat
down beside Ella and grabbed her shoulders. ‘Please, Ella, stop for
breath. Yes, I was angry with you. Yes, you screwed up. But it
sounds like you’ve apologised properly to Abigail and I
know
you wouldn’t have done it if my twin hadn’t fucked you over in the
first place.’

‘Yes, but…’

‘No buts. I forgive you. I
certainly wasn’t going to leave you, you little idiot.’ Ella let
out an incoherent little sobbing sound and Aneka pulled her into a
tight hug. ‘Of course, it’s no sex for a month and you have to
sleep at the foot of the bed.’

‘Okay,’ Ella replied in a tiny
voice.

‘Good grief! You really
did
think I’d gone for good. Where did you think I was going
to go? I can’t get home without the Hyde.’

‘But… This
is
your home.
Earth. The real one. You were born here.’

‘Aneka Jansen was born here.
I
was born on a planet in the Negral system which doesn’t
even exist anymore. My home is on New Earth, with you.’

‘Thank you.’ Tiny voice again,
but there was no point in saying anything else; Ella was sobbing
quietly into Aneka’s shoulder. There really was nothing else to
say.

Prime City,
Old Earth, 19.10.526 FSC, 9
^th
September 3186.

‘We have received an acknowledgement
message from Harriamon,’ Harper said. ‘It appears that our tachyon
transceiver system works according to your specifications.’

Aneka gave him a smile, which he
seemed rather pleased by. ‘Was there any doubt it would? Aggy gave
you the specs, I had every confidence in your ability to build the
thing.’ He had come up to Yrimtan’s rooms to tell her the news
since Ella and Gillian were there. So was Bashford having finally
got over his own addiction, more or less.

‘What did the message actually
say?’ Bashford asked.

‘Basically,’ Harper said, ‘“We
have received your message and are forwarding the contents to New
Earth.” As I said, an acknowledgement of receipt. There was a
message following it, somewhat larger and encrypted. That was
addressed to Doctor Gilroy.’ He produced a small memory stick and
handed it to her. ‘I took the liberty of transferring it to
this.’