Aneka Jansen 7: Hope by Niall Teasdale Page A

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.’
    18.11.559 FSC.
    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