Free Aneka Jansen 3: Steel Heart by Niall Teasdale Page A

small group with Kottigan.
    ‘You were the last person I could find in the labs. Nayland didn’t want me going in for another sweep as it was.’
    ‘Bastard.’ She raised her voice as they got closer. ‘Nayland! This virus, or whatever it is, it’s fucking Xinti tech, isn’t it?’
    ‘Keep your voice down!’ Nayland hissed. ‘They don’t know we’re here yet.’
    ‘You brought technology back from some site,’ Ella went on. ‘Something some Humans got their hands on and developed out of something they got from the Xinti.’
    ‘We don’t know,’ Corazon answered. ‘We don’t know exactly where they got the nanovirus from. We know they didn’t develop the initial strain…’
    ‘Shut the fuck up, Lisa!’ Nayland shouted, ignoring his own advice.
    ‘What’s the point?’ Corazon replied. ‘We’re never getting out of here alive. None of us are.’
    ‘We get on the shuttle,’ Nayland began, ‘and…’
    ‘And what? The next supply ship isn’t due for days. The shuttle’s got air for twenty hours at best. We die down here, or we die in orbit. We don’t even have a pilot!’
    Nayland raised his pistol, pointing it at Corazon. ‘Shut up! Shut up or so help me I’ll…’
    Both Kottigan and Ella raised their weapons, levelling them at Nayland, but it was Corazon who spoke. ‘Go ahead. At least it’ll be quick.’
    ‘The shuttle,’ Ella said. ‘Everyone into the shuttle.’
    ‘We can’t fly it,’ Corazon reminded her.
    ‘No, but we can seal it and on the ground the air won’t run out. There’s heat in there too.’
    ‘She’s right,’ Kottigan agreed. ‘We can hole up in there, get food in. It’s our best chance of surviving until the next supply ship comes.’
    With everyone aboard and the hatches sealed, people drifted into seats, largely attempting to avoid sitting too near anyone else. That was not difficult; the shuttle was a Concordia-class transport with two cabins and a small lounge. They were used for moving passengers up and down between New Earth and its orbital stations, and on those the lounge had vending machines for drinks. Here there were far more comfortable chairs in the lounge, but no drinks. Still, it was a good place to drag Nayland and Corazon to talk to them.
    ‘Okay,’ Ella said, ‘what do we actually know about this bug?’
    ‘We didn’t actually lie about anything we told you,’ Corazon said.
    ‘You didn’t tell me much, and I’ve never seen the written reports you said you had.’
    ‘Commercial secret,’ Nayland stated flatly.
    ‘Are you fucking nuts?! This virus wiped out the researchers who originally created it. They couldn’t control it. It killed all of them.’
    Corazon looked resigned as she spoke. ‘The written reports went into a lot of detail about their initial studies, their attempts to re-engineer the virus, and their tests, of course. We have full specs on the eventual machines they constructed, but no reports on the final stages of the last tests.’
    ‘Yeah,’ Ella said, ‘because there was no one alive to write them up. Wait, it’s not actually a virus?’
    ‘Viral nanomachines. Organic, yes, and structured like a virus superficially. They have far more complex mechanisms for altering replication in living cells. You were right; the complexity is beyond anything we’ve ever encountered before. They never said they salvaged it from some Xinti site, but there’s no way that they could have created the basic system themselves.’
    ‘And you thought it was a great idea to experiment on these things?’
    ‘Have you any idea what advances we could make in medical science studying these machines?’ Nayland asked. He was covering up insecurity with anger. ‘Genetic defects can be altered after conception, on fully grown adults. Limbs can be regrown. You have cybernetic eyes. With this technology your eyes could have been entirely regrown!’
    ‘Uh-huh… and that’s why you drugged me and spent days analysing my blood.’