The Winter War by Niall Teasdale Page A

she did. Even he had to admit that, if she was some
sort of agent for the Xinti, she had saved the lives of his son and
ex-partner, and those of a lot of other people, more than once.
Right now he was looking very happy to see Gillian and Monkey, but
he was also looking tired; the hunt for the terrorists was taking
its toll.
    Leeforth also looked tired. She
also looked many years his junior, though that meant next to
nothing. She was, of course, slim and attractive, but not very tall
and she lacked the kind of muscle definition Aneka saw in a lot of
military officers. She seemed an odd choice for an XO, not
especially authoritative, but Aneka could not see Ape playing
favourites even if, with her thick, shoulder-length, brown hair
tucked back behind her left ear, dark eyes, and milk chocolate
skin, she looked a bit like a younger Gillian. No, even if he was
sleeping with the girl, she had to be a better XO than she
looked.
    ‘I understand that I owe you for
getting Gillian out of trouble again, Miss Jansen?’ Ape said once
he had let his ex go.
    ‘Well, this time David pulled me
out of the wreckage in order to do it, so I figure it’s a fairly
even trade,’ Aneka replied.
    ‘Technically,’ Monkey said,
‘Delta carried you out with one broken arm while I covered you
both.’
    Ape looked around at the tall
form of Delta. ‘Impressive, even if you have hooked up with a
giantess, son.’ Delta blushed. ‘All right,’ Ape went on, ‘we might
as well get down to business. I’m supposed to brief you on what’s
been happening since that message you got was sent off. Then I’d
imagine you’ll take a couple of days to get yourselves in order,
but they want you briefing the Administration back on New Earth as
soon as possible.’
    ‘Of course,’ Gillian said, ‘but
you’re looking tired, Tor.’ She glanced at Leeforth. ‘You both
are.’
    ‘It’s this terrorist thing.
We’ll get to that. In fact, let’s deal with that first since Winter
asked me to brief you. Judy, would you do the honours?’
    As everyone sat down, Leeforth’s
fingers tapped over the tablet she was holding and one wall of the
room became a screen. It was showing a schematic of a spaceship,
blocky and rather ugly, with a front section which featured a
chunky circular cross-section and a pair of heavy-looking engine
nacelles at the rear. There was also a fairly large gun port in the
nose which Aneka figured was a spinal mount; a very heavy piece of
weaponry.
    ‘We don’t have full details on
these things,’ Leeforth said. She had a fairly soft voice, easy on
the ears. ‘The primary armament we’re pretty sure is a graser, and
we think it’s using antimatter torch engines. The hull armour
signature came back as unidentifiable until we checked it against
the data you got in Negral. It’s definitely using a collapsed
matter material as the outer layer so we suspect a Xinti origin,
but…’
    ‘The Xinti wouldn’t use reaction
engines,’ Gillian said.
    ‘Yes, ma’am. Their reactionless
drives were far more efficient, even in the war. A thousand years
on… Who knows, but it seems unlikely they’d go back to older
tech.’
    ‘The ring cross-section
forward,’ Drake said, ‘you’re thinking that’s the warp drive?’
    ‘Yes, sir. It’s overly large,
which may suggest a lot of speed. We’ve no confirmation on
performance characteristics. They definitely have some form
of cloaking system. They vanish off the sensors, and come out of
nowhere to begin with.’
    ‘Which is more Xinti tech, but
don’t you think this looks more like someone using cobbled
together, badly understood technology where they can rather than
the original creators of the tech?’
    Leeforth opened her mouth,
apparently thought about what she was going to say, and looked to
Ape. ‘You can speak freely here, Commander,’ the Captain told
her.
    Nodding, Leeforth said, ‘I agree
with you, Captain Drake. The official line from the Admiralty is
that the ship has