Of Sea and Stars (Partners Book 3)

by Melissa Good

  They washed it down with a faintly steaming liquid and it opened its eyes, stuck it’s tongue out and hiccuped.

  Jess regarded it. “Messy.”

  Doctor Dan gave her an amused look. “Not nearly as much as a natural born. Which I don’t guess you’ve ever witnessed.”

  “Nope. Only seen a whale deliver underwater,” Jess responded as she watched them wrap the new baby up in a piece of fabric and attach a plastic band around it’s tiny arm. From where she was, Jess could clearly see two letters printed on it and a set of numbers.

  “That’s a KayDee,” Dev told her in an undertone, as they moved the halves of the egg away. The baby vanished to another chamber and they prepared to unhook a new egg from the ring. “They do station maintenance.”

  “Ah huh.” Jess was glad Kurok was leading them elsewhere. “So he’ll stay here then, I guess?”

  “Or go to another station,” Dev said.

  They followed Kurok out into a hallway, and then they were in the main part of station again, heading for a lift tube. “We’ll take a look at the play gym then get some lunch.” He saw the grin on Jess’s face. “Much more to your tastes, I’m sure.”

  “Not much for babies,” Jess said. “Once we graduate to field school, we never go back to the areas where they bring the kids into.”

  “No, I suppose not.” Doctor Dan kicked off in the tube and they floated upward, along with a flock of others.

  This was the first time they were with a lot of people, and Dev quickly noticed they were being watched by everyone. She folded her hands in front of her and ignored the looks as they passed any number of proctors and staff, and on the edges of the tube, other bio alts.

  As they passed the mid levels up to the upper section, there were fewer people around them, and Jess took advantage of that and went into a series of lazy tumbling motions. There was a fluidly graceful way she moved that was different, and she quickly drew the eyes of the few onlookers left.

  Kurok watched with a faint smile on his face. Not what the staff had expected, he was sure, this Drake, with her aerobatic antics. He half turned and caught Dev’s expression as she too looked at her partner, the unfeigned affection clearly showing.

  “Seems like a natural spacer, eh Dev?”

  “Yes. Jess is so amazing at everything.”

  “Did I just hear that?” Jess was upside down, eyeing them.

  “I said you were amazing,” Dev repeated. “And you are!” She reached up to take Jess’s extended hand, as her partner rotated around to normal attitude. “Do you know how long it takes most people to know how to tumble in null?”

  Jess rolled her eyes and looked over at Kurok.

  “She’s right,” Doctor Dan said. “Some never learn. At least not without throwing up every other minute.”

  “I had more than enough practice with my ass over my head with her flying,” Jess said. “I had to get extra restraints put in so I’d stop banging my head on the bus floor.”

  Dev turned an appealing shade of pink, while Doctor Dan merely laughed.

  Then exited on the top level and were now at the outer rim of station, heading along a passageway that had classrooms on either side of it.

  “Do you ever keep the kids separate?” Jess asked, unexpectedly. “The bios and the rest? I know you said not in basic but after?”

  “We don’t have many natural born children up here,” Doctor Dan answered quietly. “In a year, maybe ten or so. They attend basic education classes with the sets who they match in terms of standard intelligence.”

  “Ah.”

  “Then after that, they take a set of tests and are sorted out to various areas on station for specialized classes.”

  Jess smiled at him. “A battery.”

  “Of sorts, but academic in nature,” Kurok responded. “Not quite like the one downworld.” He gave her a sidelong look “We have more control over the genetics, you see.”

  They came to a wall, the thick translucent surface curving under their hands as they watched the activity beyond. There was a heavy set of lock doors and beyond it, bathed in sunlight, a host of children tumbling in null gravity.

  Jess looked charmed. “Is that what you remember?” she asked Dev. “What you told me about?”

  “Yes.” Dev remembered well being one of those children. If she closed her eyes she could feel again the freedom of floating and the giggling of her classmates. “It was fun.”

  “That looks really cool.” Jess watched the children playing a ball game, bouncing off padded surfaces and laughing in delight. “Can we go inside?”

  “You can,” Doctor Dan said, dryly. “I’ve lost my taste for null. That trip on the shuttle was enough for me to remember why.”

  He went to the edge of the lock and palmed the door open, waving them in. “Have at it, kids.”

  Jess bounced right in, and Dev joined her, the two of them standing side by side as the portal shut and sealed.

  “Stand by for zero gravity conditions,” a woman’s voice, the same one they’d heard before, chimed. “In ten seconds. Nine. Eight.”

  “C’mon.” Jess went to the front of the chamber, waiting impatiently for the inner door to open. “Let’s go, Dev.”

  The door opened, and Jess leaned forward, then shoved off with both feet, heading upward swiftly as Dev followed her.

  It was an amazing feeling. Jess reached one of the padded surfaces and turned in mid air, kicking off again and savoring the sensation of flying as she reached out and caught hold of Dev, pulling her around and then releasing her.

  They both spun into a ray of sunlight, brilliant though buffered by the shielding on the outer skin of the station. Jess spread her arms out to savor it, this light she’d only ever seen the dimly reflected faintness of.

  At the far end of the space, a thick and padded net was spread, curtaining off the play area, and most of the children were down at that end, batting colorful rubber balls at each other. They were unaware of the two dark clad figures moving around above them, and Jess flipped over and floated on her back.

  Chapter Seven

  RANDALL DOSS CAME up behind Kurok. “What are they doing? Daniel, you let them in there with the children? What’s wrong with you?”

  “Watch them.” Kurok leaned against the wall. “They’re not doing anything. Watch Jesslyn in the null, Randall. As natural as she’d been born here.”

  Doss peered at her. “She terrified the night staff. They came and complained to me.” He sighed. “I don’t know if we should take that other contract, trying to reproduce something like her, Daniel.”

  “No harm. We can’t,” Kurok said. “The manipulation they did, the mutations they encoded, it’s far too dangerous to try. I’ll send you the report and the scan I just did.”

  Doss looked shrewdly at him. “Can’t, or won’t?”

  “Can’t. We don’t have the skill for that level of manipulation anymore. Thank goodness.” Kurok watched Jess push gently off a surface and roll into a somersault, moving past Dev who reached out to catch her. “We barely touch the surface of that kind of thing, and frankly, I wouldn’t want to try to program that kind of amorality.”

  Doss looked relieved. “After seeing her, I’m glad to hear you say that. So we should just agree to do the study? Can we get that much money out of it?”

  “Study? Sure,” Doctor Dan said. “But we can’t reproduce something like her, and even if we could, I wouldn’t.”

  “Really, Daniel?”

  “Really.” Kurok turned and looked him full in the eye. “Matter of fact I’d kill anyone who tried.”

  “What are you saying?” Doss said, after a long pause. “Are you serious?”

  “Very.”

  Doss’s eyes narrowed a little. “Daniel, consider your position. You should not say things like that. I’ll do you the courtesy of forgetting I heard it.”

  Doctor Dan smiled and went back to watching the two dark figures.

  JESS FINISHED A lazy flip in mid ai
r, reaching out to grab a padded strut as Dev drifted up next to her. They paused together, watching the children play down the curve from where they were floating. “This is cool.”

  Dev smiled. “I’m really glad you are enjoying it.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes. I find null really relaxing. We didn’t get to experience it a lot after we left the basic school, but every once in a while you could come in and play catch or something if you had a few free minutes.”

  Jess regarded the children. “They kept you pretty busy, huh?”

  “They did. Some of us...not very many, got to do what we wanted in between class and lab, or lab and meal. We could spend ten or maybe twenty minutes doing what we wanted.”

  Jess digested this in silence. “That because you were a superstar?”

  “No, well.” Dev frowned a little. “Maybe. I was always sort of advanced in class. Gigi was, too. We had a little assigned crib down by the dorms. I would go sit in there and do a lab, sometimes, or read a few pages of my book.”

  A scream drew their sharp attention, and Jess curled her boots up and got them up against the padded strut as her body tensed, ready to launch. “What was that?”

  Dev hand over handed along the support, her head turning right and left to locate the sound. Another yell rang out, and from the corner of her eye she saw Doctor Dan bolt away from the glass and start running down slope. “Something’s wrong.”

  “Yeah but what?” Jess searched the area herself, but the outline of the station and the angles defeated her instincts. Then she saw the net spread below the children, springing free and opening. “That a good thing?” She pointed.

  “No...oh no!” Dev’s eyes widened. “That open space, if they fall through there and grav cuts back in they’ll fall!”

  Jess uncoiled her body and launched herself toward the net, wishing now that this null grav was water, since there was nothing to continue pushing against to make herself go faster, and she wasn’t equipped with wings.

  Beneath her she saw the children tumbling toward the opening. “Not good!” She suddenly felt the faint tug of gravity against her.

  “Not good!” Dev yelled back.

  She could see the edge of the net and angled toward it, lunging past several bio alt kids, who goggled at her in frightened alarm.

  No time to worry about that. She caught the edge of the net and saw a strut coming up, curling herself up in the air and kicking out as she reached it to zoom off in a different direction, the net caught in the clenched fingers of one hand.

  She heard a klaxon and saw moving figures from the corner of her eye as she shot across the open space, dragging the net behind her as she saw the loose fastening the net had come off of.

  She got a hand on that then quickly got her body twisted around in time to fend off another strut, pulling her arms together to catch the net around her.

  Gravity went weird, and she felt forces pushing and shoving against her from directions she never expected them to. She felt pressure against her lungs, and a sudden headache, but she clasped her hands around her opposite wrists, coming to rest in mid air as the net tried to pull her grip apart.

  She gripped harder, resisting the pull and arched her back, closing her eyes in concentration.

  “Hang on, Jess!” Dev reached her side and was now climbing up the net as children bounced against it, wide eyed in eerie silence. “Hang on!”

  “Hanging.” Jess opened one eye as a small body hit her. She looked down to see a tiny moppet with curly red hair clutching her jumpsuit. “Hey.”

  The bio alt child looked up at her. “Ma’am,” he burbled as another child bounced against him and took hold of her. “Scared!”

  “Ever hear of going from a boat into the water?” Jess inquired, but got only incomprehensive stares back. “Never mind. Don’t pinch me.”

  The first child wrapped an arm around her leg and stared through the net as the gravity fluxed again and they were shoved downward.

  Dev got ahold of the loosened line and climbed up into the rigging, putting the line over her shoulder and pulling it forward as she climbed up the supports toward the control panel. She paused as the pull increased and took a better hold as she was almost yanked free.

  “Whatever you’re doing, Devvie, hurry it up. I’m collecting limpets,” Jess said, tightening her grip again as the pull became intense, making her muscles suddenly stand out under her jumpsuit. “Getting crunchy!”

  “Yes!” Dev saw the issue, the huge hook that held the net had disengaged and was drifting. She looped the line over the hook and secured it, then she bounced over to the control panel. “It’s lost power!”

  “Can ya fix it?” Jess closed her eyes again as the strain increased. “Before my shoulders come out of their sockets?”

  Dev turned around and looked across the open space.

  There was a jet pod making its way toward them, far too slowly. She could see technicians on the walk, watching. The children were all falling against the net in confusion.

  She felt grav fluctuating again.

  Not correct. She turned back and got to the panel, unlatched the front and yanked it open. Inside, she let her eyes scan over the boards, and without hesitation, reached inside and tripped the reset relay, pulling her hand back as the boards re-energized.

  With a growling clank the hook started to retract, pulling Jess with it toward her along with the five or six children who had latched onto her. “It’s okay, Jess!”

  Jess relaxed her hold and moved herself away as the mechanism pulled the net taut again, and the odd stresses and pulls against her vanished. The children started drifting again, and after a moment, they started laughing as though it had just been a big game.

  “Good!” One of the children who had grabbed onto her said, kicking away from the net and turning a somersault. “Where’s da ball!”

  Dev shut the panel and drifted down to join Jess as the hook retracted completely, and the games started up again. “It’s an excellent thing you caught the net, Jess,” she said. “With null grav fluxing, the children could have gotten really hurt.”

  “Mmm.” Jess still hung onto the net fabric, watching the kids move off, their fright gone. “That sort of thing happen a lot?”

  “It happens.” Dev scanned the area intently. “But not a lot. It’s quite a coincidence it happened just then.”

  “Mmm,” Jess repeated the low sound. “How much of a coincidence?” she asked. “You knew that system in there, Devvie?”

  “No,” Dev answered, after a moment. “That is not something I was specifically programmed with. But really systems are systems and there are always similarities. Power might have fluctuated and made it go offline.” She considered. “There wasn’t any overlay though.”

  “You just figured it out,” Jess said. “Like I just did what I do.”

  “Yes.”

  Jess saw a group of white lab coated figures watching them. “Or the whole thing could have been arranged to give them something to look at.” She started down the net. “Let’s go find out.”

  Dev pulled herself along behind her, the null area no longer seeming so lighthearted.

  KUROK HAD STOPPED mid walkway and gone to the glass, seeing Jess catch the net and secure it with her powerful grip. He could see the surface fluctuate and the children tumbling, but the con that handled grav in the gym was on other side of the ring from him and out of reach.

  A safety pod was on the way, maneuvering cautiously, but Jess’s quick response kept the net mostly in place, and the gap that threatened to open to let helpless children tumble down to deck had closed.

  There were klaxons sounding though, and he saw by the motion of the net that gravity was threatening to take hold, pulling the synth webbing taut against the hold Jess had on it. He saw her body flex in response.

  Doss caught up with him. “Oh my goodness, what’s going on, Daniel?” He was gasping. “Oh! The agent! The children! Look!”

  “The agen
t.” Kurok repeated. “Demonstrating the utterly contradictory quality of sacrificing self to the greater good.” He watched Dev climb up to the equipment panel, the fluctuating grav making her somewhat unsteady. “The only thing that ties Interforce together and keeps it going.”

  “But...”

  “Watch.” He leaned against the glass. “There must be several thousand kilos of force pulling on that grip. Can you fathom the engineering that went into that?” He watched Jess in fascination. “Imagine the strength there.”

  “Well...yes.” Doss pressed his hands against the glass next to him. “Is the chamber malfunctioning?”

  “So it seems.”

  Doss spotted Dev’s moving form. “Oh! What’s the unit doing? Daniel!”

  Kurok eyed him dourly “Dev? Probably she’s fixing the problem.”

  Doss frowned. “But that unit never received station maintenance programming.” He looked at Kurok. “So how would she know what to do?”

  “What do you mean, how would she know? She’s a tech,” Kurok said in a testy tone.

  “Yes, of course, but not for our systems. That’s a very specific set.” Doss stared at him. “I saw the programming schema for the unit, it had nothing in there about station.”

  Kurok carefully controlled his breathing. “How would you know what to do, Randall, when faced with some unknown parameter in a class structure? You’d figure it out, based on experience, right?”

  “Well, yes of course.”

  “Dev does the same thing.” Kurok turned and started down the tube again. “Not really that remarkable actually. Humans have been doing that for twenty thousand years.” He sped up to a jog, wanting to get away from Doss’s questioning eyes.

  “But, Daniel!”

  “We can discuss it later,” he called back over his shoulder. “I want to make sure everyone’s all right.” He got around the curve of the ring and sped up, breaking into a jog again.