Read Aneka Jansen 7: Hope for Free Online Page A

and had never actually got around to.
    She was in the middle of a book called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It was one of the ones on her list which she was reading as a study of how people in the past had thought the world would turn out. She called it her ‘stuff they got wrong’ list, mostly because no one had really seen the Xinti intervention or the war coming. Not that she could blame them for that, and plenty of people had come up with plots which kind of matched. Aneka had told her that they had made a film of this one and the actor in it was pretty good, though Ella had not been sure whether she meant his acting or his looks. She made a mental note to see if they had the film in the libraries on Old Earth at almost the exact instant the door opened.
    It was the guard, holding those metal bracelets again. Ella got up and held her arms out and did not resist as he pinned her to the wall. It had happened a couple of times in the last few days, always when an officer of some sort was coming in to visit her. This time it was Detrow returning.
    The Lieutenant Colonel regarded her dispassionately for several seconds: it seemed as though he had a habit of doing so whenever he walked in. ‘Ella Narrows, your case has been reviewed by the Office of the Pinnacle Commander and you have been found guilty on all charges. The sentence is death. Do you wish to say anything at this time?’
    Ella stared at him. Yes, she had something to say. How could they do this? They had no right! There was no way they could think of killing her. She would never see Aneka again. She opened her mouth and…
    ‘Noted. Sentence is to be carried out on Ariadne. Put her out.’
    The guard stepped forward and applied a hypo to Ella’s arm. There was a stinging sensation and an immediate feeling of numbness. ‘You can’t do… do this. I… I’m… You can’t…’ And then the world sank into darkness.

Part Three: Ballistic Intelligence Acquisition
    Treamon, Oberian, 8.11.559 FSC.
    Local fashion on Oberian tended to be on the frumpy side, at least outside of buildings. The average daytime temperature was around minus ten Celsius and the population was basically Human. There had been some adaptation and a bit of genetic tampering: they were more tolerant of cold and used to the thin atmosphere. They still tended to wear heavy, warm clothing a lot.
    With all the padding, it was frequently hard to tell what sex anyone was, but Aneka stood out, taller and substantially better endowed than the local girls. It made it harder to blend in, but Oberian did a lot of off-world trading, primarily in metals, so she was probably an outsider but nothing to worry about.
    And she had been there before. It was part of the reason she had elected to start her search there. Winter had sent her there on the hunt for the gun runners and she had made a few friends as well as a couple of enemies. The enemies had learned enough about her to stay out of her way, she hoped. The ones that were still alive anyway. The others were not a concern.
    So she was back in Treamon, which was one of the larger cities on the planet, and hoping that she might find some information on who was the most likely group to have hit Lacora.
    Aggy had insisted on transporting them through to the system personally. It gave her a little more time with Gwy, and Aneka was certainly not going to deny them that. The two ships had the most unconventional relationship Aneka had ever heard of. Al and Cassandra had had something close when they had first met, but Aggy and Gwy had them beaten. Both of them had had algorithms included in their programming to allow them to emulate more or less Human reactions to stimuli in a virtual environment, but while they had some sort of sex life, that was not how they conducted it. Both of them occasionally indulged with crew members, but not with each other. Instead they shared… something else. Cassandra had been trying to analyse and record the nature of