Read Online The Cold Steel Mind by Niall Teasdale - Free Book Online

tough.’
    ‘I think,’ Brin said, ‘we’d best get Donnal back to base and sobered up before the Reps see him. He only speaks Rimmic when he’s hammered.’
    Aneka sank her last shot because it was there. ‘Nice meeting you. We should get Ella to bed as well.’
    ‘You’re calling Lena though, right?’ Ella said as they walked to the door.
    ‘Sending a message now,’ Al said when Aneka had not said ‘no’ after a second.
    ‘What did he actually call Aneka?’ Shannon asked.
    ‘One tough bitch,’ Ella supplied.
    Shannon chuckled. ‘Got that right.’
    ~~~
    Shannon lifted her head from between Ella’s legs long enough to say, ‘Feels like Lena’s arrived.’
    Aneka, watching them from the desk chair, rose smoothly to her feet. ‘Good, I could do with someone to entertain me.’ The buzzer on the door went a second later.
    ‘More than just her, you might have your hands full. And various orifices probably.’
    ‘Odd, she didn’t say she was bringing anyone when she replied.’ Rooms at the hotel did not have a spy hole in the door, they had cameras outside the room, and it took just a thought for the view from it to appear in Aneka’s vision field. Lena was there, wearing a dress which carried the name only because there was no other name for a garment that shape; it largely seemed to consist of string holding cloth panels in strategic positions. And she appeared to be alone. Aneka stopped. ‘You’re sure there are people with her?’ Lena’s face was invisible from this angle, but her body language was tense.
    ‘Two or three, the noise in my head is that much louder.’ Both Shannon and Ella had stopped what they were doing now, picking up on Aneka’s tone.
    ‘In the bathroom, both of you. Something’s not right.’ They scurried to obey and Aneka stepped forward, mustering an excuse for why answering the door had taken so long. She had concluded that being naked was going to be excuse enough in the second or so it took to reach the door and press the panel that opened it. The excuse was not needed anyway.
    Lena was pushed towards Aneka as soon as the door opened, a move designed to be distracting in all probability. It failed because Aneka could see the two men in optical-adaptive camouflage suits behind her; the suits masked heat signature well enough, as well as mimicking the local visual spectrum, but Aneka’s eyes covered more wavelengths than that. She stepped aside, leaving Lena to fall, half on the bed, and raised her right hand towards the first of the men coming through after the dancer. The force generator in her hand was not especially powerful, but it was pretty much like being smacked in the face with a baseball bat. He fell backwards into his teammate, and Aneka now had the advantage.
    The impact must have disturbed the optical system in the suits because the two of them became visible in a disturbing flicker of digital noise. Aneka found herself looking at two male figures with muscular, heavy bodies, both of them encased from head to foot in smooth, white Plastex. There had to be some sort of video relay between the outside of the suit and the inside or neither would have been able to see, but Aneka was more concerned about the gun the second man was pulling. She dived out into the corridor, landing full length on top of the thug. Her left hand grabbed his right wrist and held it, her left clamped over the man’s throat and squeezed. He struggled, still trying to pull the gun, but his organic muscles were no match for Aneka’s cybernetic ones and he was rapidly losing oxygen flow to the brain. He struggled, tried hitting at her, and none of it did much to change his situation. After about fifteen seconds his struggles weakened and, to Aneka’s amazement, he actually started getting aroused. Then the struggling stopped entirely.
    Aneka pulled the two pistols the men were carrying, both stun guns from the looks of them, and turned around. Shannon had dragged Lena onto the bed