Steel Beneath the Skin by Niall Teasdale Page A

skull was more or less gone, but what was left showed charring. Most interesting to Aneka was her left arm, which was cybernetic.
    ‘If she was shot, and a while ago,’ Aneka said, nodding toward the corpse, ‘would that seem to indicate that we have two assaults here?’
    ‘We probably won’t know for sure until we’ve run the dating sequences,’ Gilroy replied. ‘I admit the differences in the two corpses are perplexing.’
    ‘Artificial arm too.’
    ‘The prejudice regarding cybernetics comes from the war. This place predates that and replacement of body parts, even voluntarily, was far more common back then.’ Gilroy gave a shrug. ‘Even now it’s used where needed. Look at Ella.’
    ‘Scan’s complete,’ Ella told them, picking up the instrument and moving to one side. Aneka pulled her pistol and edged past. The picture-in-picture sighting display appeared along with a charge count and a “lethal” indicator. Not knowing what she was dealing with, she left the weapon at full power. ‘Be careful,’ Ella said, sounding a little worried.
    ‘You people seem to keep forgetting what I am.’
    The door had a pull handle on it which undid the latch and let it be slid sideways. Gripping it, she pulled, opening the door far enough to allow the nose of her pistol to be slipped through. ‘Machine room,’ she said. ‘Looks like… computer racks. A big cylindrical device. Could be a power unit of some sort. That’s where the heat source is. I’ll patch the video through to your helmets…’
    There was a pause and then, ‘That’s a fusion plant,’ Gilroy said, sounding a little surprised. ‘If it’s still operating, it must have been dropped to minimal output or have a large auxiliary fuel tank under the building.’
    ‘The terahertz survey didn’t indicate anything below this building,’ Ella supplied.
    Satisfied that the heat source was not an immediate danger, Aneka pulled the door fully open. Standing in the doorway she could see an indicator panel on the side of the power unit and her gun sights had pretty good magnification. ‘See that? Fuel level is practically zero, but something’s drawing about five-hundred watts.’ She scanned her camera around the room and stopped. There was a dim, but active, LED glowing on one of the racks. ‘It looks like there’s still some active electronics.’
    ‘Oh, let it be the colony log unit,’ Gilroy almost prayed. ‘We may even get video and reports on the xinti attack.’ She started down the corridor along with Ella. ‘Get a scan of the room and then we’ll see what we can salvage. Aneka, could you open up the other rooms?’
    Slipping her gun into her holster, Aneka nodded and turned to the door behind her. For some reason it was all a little depressing. She was used to dropping into places like this in order to mount rescue operations. Here she was with a body which could have stood up to anti-tank weaponry back at home, but here there was no one to rescue. Everyone had died a thousand years ago.
    Gripping the handle, Aneka yanked open the door and did not even bother looking before moving on to the next.
    ~~~
    ‘Well,’ Gilroy said as they sat in the shuttle for lunch, ‘this may partially explain our mysterious corpses.’ Everyone turned to glance at her, except for Aneka who was sat at the security station, a little out of the way, having no need to eat. ‘Five of our seven bodies date, as I suggested, to the end of the Xinti War. Approximately nine-hundred and fifteen years, plus or minus fifty. Two of them, however, came back at three-hundred and twenty-two years.’
    ‘Isn’t that within what you classify as recorded history?’ Aneka asked.
    ‘Yes, but this region is still classified as outside the Federal Rim. Back then it was “here be dragons” country.’
    Aneka laughed. ‘I can’t believe you still use that phrase.’
    ‘You’d prefer “here be space dragons” perhaps?’
    ‘Better. So some bunch of deep space