Aneka Jansen 3: Steel Heart Read Online Free PDF

we’re planetside, and I don’t stop this lot hooking up when they need the relief. It’s way better than having frustrated crewmen making mistakes. I have to keep some professional detachment, however. Daventry’s the same, though he’s young enough to think he can still make something permanent work. He’s got a guy named Darren back on New Earth.’
    Aneka chuckled. ‘Ella’d never manage this long without sex. You’ve obviously got more control.’
    ‘No, I’ve got a really good vibrator.’
    Hayward Alpha Research Facility, Eshebbon, 7.12.525 FSC.
    The air was freezing. Not literally: Ella had been on a world where the air was literally a frozen carpet on the ground which vaporised into puffs of gas when trodden on. Eshebbon was nowhere near that cold, but it was sub-zero and the ground was covered in a thick layer of snow and ice. Ella suspected the snow never really melted aside from when robots were sent out to steam clean the pathways.
    ‘We should hurry.’ The voice was that of Andrew Kottigan, the head of security at the station. He had been sent out to meet Ella when the shuttle had brought her down from orbit. ‘Spend more than a few minutes in this temperature and you’ll freeze.’
    Ella nodded, though it was only her face that was feeling the chill. She was still in the ship-suit she had got on Negral and it was keeping her at a comfortable temperature. With her helmet on she would be fine more or less indefinitely, not that she had plans to need that. Kottigan was wearing a heat suit: a thick, thermal bodysuit.
    ‘Why put a research station on a frozen ball like this?’ she asked.
    ‘Security,’ Kottigan replied, ‘and safety. Very limited resources and it’s hard to farm on so it’s never been settled and there’s no indigenous life larger than a microbe. We do research here on some of the most virulent, dangerous diseases ever encountered. If there’s an escape there’s no one here to die except us.’
    ‘Comforting.’
    ‘Don’t worry. Most of the really dangerous stuff is over at the Beta Station. There’s two kilometres of ice between here and there. The stuff they’ve brought you in for is all here.’ He stopped in front of a thick, metal door with a wheel mounted on it. ‘The surface facility here is pretty open,’ he said as he turned the wheel to un-dog the door. ‘There’s a secure elevator down to the labs, but you’ll be up here on your off-time.’
    The door was swung open and they stepped into a small chamber with another, inner door. Not exactly an airlock, more a weather shield. When the inner door was opened Ella could understand why; the temperature inside was easily twenty degrees hotter than outside. Kottigan stopped in the room beyond to start stripping off his suit. Beneath it he was wearing a light T-shirt and a pair of briefs.
    ‘I’ll get you set up with a room and Nayland will be up to sort out your work in an hour or so.’ The man pulled on what looked like sweat pants and then added running shoes. Formality was obviously not a big deal here. ‘You can get comfortable before you need to start.’
    ‘I’m pretty anxious to get going. Sooner I start, sooner I’m done.’
    Kottigan laughed. ‘Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be here either if the pay wasn’t so good.’
    He led the way out the rear door of the room and then up a circular, metal staircase into the tower structure above the entrance. Two floors up Kottigan opened another heavy door with a locking wheel and ushered Ella into a room. It was surprisingly comfortable looking. The walls were currently displaying a fairly pleasing scene of a summer day over fields of high, yellow grass, but there was a real window, not high but spanning most of the semi-circular outer wall. The bed was a double, and there was a shower cubicle taking up a corner. The room also had a computer console mounted into a desk.
    ‘This is one of the guest rooms,’ Kottigan told her, ‘for visiting dignitaries