Steel Beneath the Skin (36 page)

‘You… you’re… an abomination!’

‘That makes two of us then,’ she replied. Then she straightened the fingers of her free hand and slammed them into throat. He blacked out almost instantly from the shock, but she could hear his breath rattling in his throat. ‘Still alive,’ she muttered and she reached toward him, focussing on his throat, fingers spread. The force generator had a setting she had not mentioned to anyone else; an oscillating graviton field formed briefly within Hunter’s neck crushing his windpipe. He coughed once, blood flecking his lips, and then he lay still.

2.7.524 FSC.

‘I’m showing a missile battery near the landing platform on the north-west side, but I’m seeing no radar emissions at all, not even tracking radar.’ The sensor officer of the assault shuttle watched his displays nervously. The briefing had stated that there were well-armed terrorists on the island they were two minutes away from and, frankly, the entire assault team was on a hair trigger. They had trained for this over and over again, but actually doing it was another matter.

‘All right,’ Commander Brod said, ‘we drop into that clearing in the centre of the island. Set us a course for insertion.’ He shifted in his harness, tapping a pad on the multi-display rig in front of him. ‘Captain, we’re going in.’

Gibbons’ voice sounded over Brod’s headset. ‘Any sign of resistance?’

‘So far it looks like the entire island is dead…’

‘Picking up infrared signatures in the housing structures around the outer edge,’ the sensor officer announced. ‘All immobile.’

‘We’ve got warm bodies,’ Brod said, ‘but if they’re aware of us they’re not doing anything about it.’

‘Take all due precautions, Commander,’ Gibbons said. ‘Remember we have non-combatants in there.’

‘Confirmed. Brod out.’ The commander disengaged his harness and moved toward the rear of the shuttle where his team was waiting. Thirty men and women in combat suits with ducted-turbofan drop packs, the same gear as Brod was wearing, all locked into stabilising brackets on the sides of the troop compartment. ‘Disengage locks and prepare for deployment. I want a standard defensive drop, keep it tight, and
check your targets.
There are civilians down there.’

The rear ramp lowered as the troops disconnected from the ship. The red light over the door began to flash and they prepped for disembarkation; the twin turbofan system on their backs kicked into life and each of them readied their laser rifle. The light went green and they charged out into the air, five hundred metres over the island.

There was no gunfire from below, no sign of anyone responding to their arrival. The shuttle circled slowly above them as they dropped, its underside turret turning to cover the ground below with its heavy laser and rotary cannon. It was not needed. The platoon landed without incident, dropping their flight packs and lowering into watchful crouches with weapons and multi-spectral sensor arrays scanning the undergrowth.

‘I’m picking up no comm traffic,’ the sensor officer announced over their encrypted field radios. ‘There appears to be no response at all.’

‘All right,’ Brod said. ‘We’ve got the layout. Squad One, you’re with me. We’ll circle to the beach and search the houses. Squad Two, head straight for the barracks buildings. Squad Three, take that bunker. Move.’

Brod had barely made it into the tree line when he heard Squad Three’s leader over the radio. ‘Sir, we’ve secured the bunker. The doors were wide open and there’s no one here. There is an armoury stocked up with some pretty heavy weapons, and a couple of bodies. Whatever happened here, we missed it.’

‘Okay, sweep south and circle around to the east once you’ve hit the beach.’

‘Acknowledged.’

‘Sir?’ Squad Two’s leader this time. ‘We’ve reached the barracks. Looks like grenades, some small arms fire. There’s nothing here but bodies.’

Brod frowned. What the hell had happened here? ‘Continue north to the larger house.’

‘Acknowledged. Sir, what happened to these people? If I didn’t know better I’d think we’d already been here.’

‘No point in speculating. Continue the search.’

Ahead of Brod’s squad, the rear of a wooden beach hut appeared through the trees. It was not large, but big enough to contain a couple of rooms. Brod could make out a heat signature, probably lying down, though the thick wood made it hard to be sure exactly what he was seeing. He signalled for them to move forward and they went by fire team, leap-frogging forward toward the back wall of the hut.

It was as Brod reached the corner of the building that they heard the scream. It was female, definitely, and coming from inside the hut. ‘Move!’ Brod snapped, turning the corner himself as his people rushed forward. The front of the hut seemed to be just a bank of light curtains. Brod came around to the front of the hut and saw his men holding the fabric open and just… standing there looking surprised. Brod pulled a curtain aside and looked in, just in time to see a tall, tanned, white-haired woman lifting her head from between the legs of a shorter redhead.

Aneka licked her lips and wiped at the corners of her mouth with a hand. ‘I’m glad you people could join us,’ she said. ‘Beach holidays are cool, but I’ll get bored and kill people if I have to sunbathe much more.’

FNb Admiral Banfry

‘We’ve taken seven men into custody,’ Gibbons said, ‘and we’ve got thirty women in the infirmary and the guest quarters. We put the bodies…’ His gaze moved across his desk to where Aneka was sitting, Ella beside her. ‘...and there were a lot of bodies, in one of the storage holds.’

Winter nodded. ‘Hunter?’ The spy mistress had arrived a couple of hours after the island had been evacuated of non-combatants, with an entourage of technicians and security specialists.

‘Is one of the bodies. So is Parry. Turns out she was a synthetic. Techs say she’s a Valkyrie, a combat variant of a Succubus model.’

‘Did you have to kill him, Miss Jansen?’ She did not sound exactly disappointed about it.

‘No,’ Aneka replied, ‘but I
really
wanted to.’

‘Yes, well I can understand that. How are you, Miss Narrows?’

‘I’m… okay, mostly. I’ll have to put up with having a period this month, I hope. The doctors are saying they can’t be sure I won’t end up pregnant for another few days.’ She paused. ‘And I’m not anxious to have sex with a man any time soon.’

‘We’ve got twenty-five pregnancies,’ Gibbons put in. ‘All the women are going to need counselling. Some of them want the babies gone, others bought into Hunter’s propaganda and want to raise good little soldiers for humanity.’

‘You can’t get rid of the unwanted pregnancies?’ Aneka asked. ‘Some of them didn’t look far gone.’ Ella gave her a horrified look. ‘What?’

‘Abortion is illegal, Miss Jansen,’ Winter explained. ‘Well, under extreme circumstances the procedure is allowed to save the life of the mother, but otherwise it’s classed as murder. When everyone can voluntarily control their reproduction it’s considered your problem if you’re stupid enough to get pregnant by accident.’ Aneka opened her mouth to speak, but Winter went on. ‘I understand that some of these women have been given drugs to remove their volition, but the law still stands. We can arrange adoption where the child isn’t wanted.’

‘You had abortion back then?’ Ella asked, still looking shocked.

‘Depended on local law, but yes,’ Aneka replied. ‘We didn’t have perfect contraception, we did have lousy sex education and a lot of stupid people. Though even some of the stricter states would grant permission in the case of rape, which is essentially the situation here.’

‘Very well,’ Winter said, bringing the morality discussion to a close, ‘the situation seems to be contained for now. Captain, if you would make haste back to New Earth we’ll continue the debriefings there. I want to get my team going over Hunter’s operation and I’m sure Miss Jansen and Miss Narrows are keen to be back in their own home.’

‘Yeah,’ Ella said, ‘just a little.’

Part Seven: Facilitating Change

Tristar Township, New Earth, 6.7.524 FSC.

The entire crew of the Garnet Hyde had decided they wanted physical proof that Aneka and Ella were okay, so Gillian was hosting what amounted to a pool party. Aneka was pretty sure that it would have involved more sex if everyone was not tip-toeing around Ella. As it was there were instances where couples would vanish for a while and return later looking satisfied. Ella was quietly ignoring that, and Aneka thought she was a little annoyed that people were behaving differently because of what had happened to her.

Only Shannon seemed concerned about Aneka’s feelings on her recent ordeal. The telepath had expressed that concern quite openly. If she had still been human, Aneka was sure she would have been almost as traumatised as Ella, but the body she had given over to saving her friend from too much attention was not, quite, hers. She was thankful she did not dream, however; not the same way normal humans did anyway.

It was when Monkey sank gingerly into the hot tub opposite Aneka and Ella wearing swimming trunks that Ella finally snapped. ‘Good grief! Why is everyone acting like I’ll break if I see a naked man? Don’t make me fuck someone to make you think I’m over it.’

There was total silence for a little over a second, and then Aneka started giggling and Ella punched her in the shoulder. ‘What? I’ve been expecting an outburst like that for the last hour. Get your trunks off, Monkey, before she enacts her threat.’

Making shuffling motions to do as requested, the young man gave Aneka a slightly timid grin. ‘But, I’m closest so if she were to do it, I’d probably be the fuckee. Is that really an incentive to comply?’

Aneka turned to Ella. ‘He does have a point. That wasn’t a well thought out ultimatum.’

Ella glowered at her. ‘Ah… eat me!’

Aneka’s lips twitched and, silently, she sank beneath the water. A second later Ella let out a squeak.

Gillian, sat between Ella and her son, smiled. ‘I believe, my dear Ella, that you’re forgetting that she doesn’t need to breathe.’

‘Y-yes… you’re r-right… I hadn’t th-thought of that either.’ Her head rolled back onto the decking the pool was sunk into.

‘She’s clearly not worried about sex,’ Shannon commented.

‘Just sex with men,’ Gillian replied, ‘and she has a three step plan to get over it.’

‘I thought these plans had to have at least five steps?’ Monkey said.

‘Well, hers has three. Step one is waiting for the effects of the Ovanimax to wear off, just in case. That also gives her a break period where she feels no pressure. Then she’s going to initiate something with her neighbours and Aneka, lots of female contact along with a male.’

‘That sounds fairly considered,’ Shannon said. ‘Somewhat akin to the mechanisms they use to desensitise people with phobias. What’s step three?’

‘Orgy.’

Shannon burst into a fit of giggles. ‘That’s so Ella, but I’m not sure that’s a great idea.’

‘I’m quite sure Aneka will make sure she takes her time about it. The woman has a remarkably solid head on her shoulders for someone dumped into this century with no warning. Perhaps
because
she was…’ She was interrupted by Ella having a rather noisy, and very splashy, orgasm. Aneka emerged from beneath the water, smirking.

‘If I say that to you,’ Monkey said as she slipped back onto the bench beside Ella, ‘would I get the same treatment.’

‘Considering that it’d mean you actually wanted me to do something,’ Aneka replied, ‘I probably would.’

‘Huh, yeah… Hadn’t thought of it like that.’ He grinned. ‘Well, don’t cos it’d sound like I was desperate, but I think I’m over that. I’m not going to get myself an android sex doll, but… Well, you’re different. You’re jenlay… well, human. Just human in a shell.’

‘Thanks. Hunter called me an abomination when he found out what I was. At least I’ve got someone else thinking I’m normal.’

‘You’re
not
an abomination,’ Ella said, her head still rolled back. ‘You’re a fucking angel.’

Aneka laughed. ‘I’m surprised that word still exists. Considering that Christianity doesn’t seem to exist.’

‘A repurposed word,’ Gillian explained. ‘The Torem believe that Vashma manifests itself occasionally in the form of messenger beings, entities of divine grace. They have their own word for them, but we call them angels. No one has ever had unequivocal evidence that they exist.’

‘Sounds like an angel,’ Aneka agreed. ‘I’m not one.’

‘I’m sticking to my opinion,’ Ella said, finally lifting her head. ‘I’m also going to be more careful about my insults.’

‘Always good advice,’ Drake said. He and Bashford were sat at a table nearby, under a large, canvas sunshade. Aneka had absently noted that they were the only remaining members of the crew she thought of by their surnames, though technically Bashford was “Bash” to most people, and everyone called Drake “Drake” because he did not like his first name. They were friends now, all of them. She had friends here; friends who cared about her. ‘And for the record,’ Drake added, ‘Hunter was wrong. So you’ve got a cybernetic body. Who cares? You’re as… human as anyone here. And if you hadn’t had that body a lot of us would be dead about now. Oddly, I think what really convinced me you were
really
jenlay was the sex. Robots… just don’t come like that.’

Aneka laughed, but it was nice to hear. Her ego needed a little boosting. ‘What are you drinking, Bash?’ was what she said.

‘Beer,’ he replied. ‘I brew it myself.’

Aneka’s eyes narrowed and she pulled herself out of the tub to wander over. ‘Really? Could I try it?’ He handed her the glass, though his eyes were watching her body, which was also an ego boost. She took a careful sip. ‘Holy crap! That tastes like beer! A bitter. You realise this is the first drink anyone’s given me that tastes the way it’s supposed to?’

Bashford chuckled. ‘I brought a case over with me and I do a couple of other brews. I’ve found very few people who actually like the stuff.’

Aneka handed his glass back and started for the kitchen. ‘Taste of home, here I come.’