Read Aneka Jansen 7: Hope for Free Online Page B

their relationship for years, and she had been getting nowhere.
    It was still disconcerting to have your ship humming contentedly to herself as they flew in towards the planet. Gwy sounded for all the world like a woman who had just had the most glorious sex ever .
    Now, however, everything was back to business.
    ‘I have located Dolan Undal,’ Gwy said into Aneka’s head. ‘He is in his usual place.’
    The usual place was a bar called the Happy Chance Saloon for which the term ‘dive’ had been invented. Dimly lit, it had a lot of booths at the back and generally bored-looking staff who were functionally deaf as far as conversations at tables were concerned. It was exactly the sort of place you might expect to find Oberian’s only professional spy and information broker.
    Undal fit the suave espionage agent stereotype. In the warmth of the bar he dressed in a crisp, black, silky shirt and black slacks. His black hair was cut to the latest, short style. He was handsome, and his blue eyes held a lot of intelligence and a substantial quality of shrewdness, and he watched Aneka approaching with the air of someone who could see opportunity walking his way.
    ‘Miss Jansen, what brings you back to Treamon?’
    Aneka settled into the booth beside him, dropping her long, padded coat on the seat beside her. He did not object to the apparent familiarity, recognising it as a move which allowed her to watch the door. ‘I’m looking for someone.’
    ‘What has some poor fool done to incur your displeasure this time?’
    ‘Huh. She cheated on me, but that’s not why I’m looking for her. She was kidnapped from Lacora. It’s–’
    ‘I know of Lacora. No one from here goes there. They say it’s cursed, if you believe in that sort of thing. It’s certainly not a safe world. Every attempt to colonise it has ended in death.’
    ‘There’s some sort of bioweapon in the water.’
    ‘That would certainly explain it. More recently, however, I heard that the Pinnacle were taking an interest in it.’
    Aneka frowned. If the Pinnacle had grabbed Ella… ‘I’d heard they were expanding, but I didn’t think they’d come out so far.’ She had heard rumours on a number of worlds, even this one, but nothing substantive.
    ‘They established a base, a “border enforcement station,” not too far from Lacora last year. It’s the closest they’ve come to a military presence near here.’
    ‘I don’t suppose you could get me coordinates for that station?’
    ‘I am afraid that I don’t have them. We know it’s there, somewhere, but the exact location is an unknown.’
    ‘I could really do with finding out where it is, Dolan.’
    The spy smiled. ‘And I know just the people for you to ask.’
    Aneka’s eyes narrowed. ‘What’s this going to cost me?’
    ‘Oh… Let us just say that if you ask sufficiently harshly that you get the answer, it will be of mutual benefit.’
    ~~~
    ‘The building is heavily shielded against electromagnetic interference and screened against eavesdropping,’ Al stated. ‘It appears that we will be required to infiltrate it to get what we want.’
    Aneka sighed, but she had been expecting it. The building housed the Pinnacle’s presence on Oberian, or the primary part of it. From there they did their best to monitor communications traffic across the planet and given that their technology was a generation and a bit above the native systems, they did a pretty good job. Undal was, of course, less than pleased with that, but there was little he could do about it. The fractured political structure of the planet meant that at least some of the governments there were quite in favour of Pinnacle involvement in the world’s affairs. The more sensible ones, and Undal, knew that once the neighbours got a foot in the door they would ram in the boot, possibly with a nuclear toecap. Of course, if some outsider took exception to them…
    Aneka slipped down an alleyway and took off her coat, dumping it