Of Sea and Stars (Partners Book 3)

by Melissa Good

  “The power intake baseline is coming up. I don’t know if it will come up in time,” Dev said. “If it does not, we cannot recover station as there will be no battery power to run the routines.”

  “Does that mean we will be made dead?” the BeeAye next to her asked.

  “Yes,” Dev said. “Eventually. We will not be able to bring life support or systems online.” She glanced back at Jess. “I’m really sorry, Jess.”

  “Don’t be.” Jess looked at the screen then wrapped her arms around Dev and just held onto her. “We all have to croak sometime. Glad I’m here with you, Devvie. Dying alone is a bummer.”

  “You are not afraid of that?” the BeeAye said. He turned in his seat to watch them. “Of being made dead?”

  “No,” Jess said. “It’s one of our little quirks. There have been times in my life when I was so damn hurt it would have been a relief to die. Pain does that.”

  It got quiet as they all watched the screens or the tall agent, stretched out in mid air, holding on to the seated Dev.

  “But I’m glad I lived long enough to hook up with my partner here.” Jess gave her a bit of a sideways and uncomfortable squeeze. “All of us live such crappy lives. Finding a friend is good.”

  Dev was caught in perfect balance between delight and horror, as she watched the racing seconds matched against the sequence running with what seemed to her unreasonable slowness behind it. Did she feel the same way Jess did? Was it okay to be made dead?

  She felt the warmth of Jess’s cheek against hers, and she had to admit that if one was to be made dead, it would be nice to have the last thing you felt something like that. “We get nearly made dead a lot,” she said. “So when you can feel good and nice things, you should appreciate that.”

  “Hmm.” the BeeAye grunted thoughtfully.

  “And also,” Dev said as the counter cycled down through thirty seconds, “all of those things they told us about sex,” she regarded the intently watching sets, “they lied. They lied about a lot of things.”

  Jess started laughing silently, her breath puffing against Dev’s ear.

  “Ten seconds.” Dev turned her head and twisted her body around so she could kiss Jess, and that felt wonderful.

  Seven.

  Five.

  Two.

  The countdown finished, and with utterly anticlimactic blurps two of the alerts went off. The station remained mostly nonfunctional, but relatively in one piece, the emergency lighting still on. Dev finished her kiss then turned and resumed her entry, keying in two more diagnostics. “That was unexpectedly excellent.”

  Jess licked her lips. “I sure thought so.” She ruffled Dev’s hair. “C’mon, Devvie. Lets not croak just yet, huh? I want to spend more time with ya.”

  Dev smiled. “I will do my best. I want to spend more time with you, too.”

  “We did not get made dead,” the BeeAye next to her said. “But that is very valuable information, NM-Dev-1.”

  “Can we try that, too?” a KayTee asked, looking at Jess with a lot more interest.

  Dev’s hands paused on the input pad as she gave them a sideways look. “The sex thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.” Dev went back to her screen as Jess started laughing again, this time audibly. Systems were starting to inch back online, but only the basics and wiremaps. “The power sump is online, but the grid is down,” she said. “Jess, the vehicle is drawing current.” She pointed at the screen. “It seems they are trying to withdraw from the data banks.”

  “Of course they are,” Jess said. “They want that info.” She pushed herself up. “I’ll go sort them out.” She went to the map on the wall. “This where they are?” she pointed. “Yeah, I can see the outline. Keep trying to fix it, Devvie. I’ll be back.”

  One of the BeeAyes timidly approached. “Agent, if you put these on your boots, you’ll stick to the floor.” He held out a set of wraps. “May we help you?”

  Jess tumbled through the air toward him and retrieved the covers. “Not this time kids.” She tucked the covers into a thigh pocket. “Stay here and help Dev.” She kicked off from the console and headed for the door. “And keep an eye on the doc!”

  Dev half stood behind the station. “Jess! Take care. Please.”

  Jess turned and grinned at her, giving her a wink before she tumbled in the air and headed out through the half open hatch.

  A KayTee started entering on a pad. “All of the sectors are sealed. Should we try to bring up comms?”

  Dev resumed her seat. “Not yet,” she said. “They will all just start calling and asking questions we do not have answers to.”

  “Yes. That’s true.”

  A BeeAye looked over. “Should we unseal the crèche?”

  Dev considered. “Not right now. The seal works both ways.”’

  A KayTee nodded. “They are safe there from the natural borns.”

  JESS ZOOMED DOWN down the hallways, bypassing the floating debris and kicking off against the surfaces that came into range. Movement didn’t generate forward motion she’d come to find, not like it did in the water as there was nothing to push against.

  So she had to go in a direction until she found something she could shove against to send her in a different one or sling herself along where she wanted to go.

  It was slower than running would have been. But also much quieter. Jess reached a crossroads and bumped against the edge of a tube that started outward, its color stark and dark gray. She caught the grab bar on the side of it and pulled herself along, noticing the air around her becoming colder. A little thinner.

  Her heartbeat sped up a trifle, and her lungs worked harder for a few minutes, then her body adjusted and her metabolism shifted gear just as it would have if she’d been in high altitude downside.

  The tube tilted downward, and she could see through the occasional open panel the world turning in gray shadows below. Ahead of her she saw a bulkhead seal. She reached it, looked back at the core of the station, and saw the next level down, eerie yellow light shining from inside it.

  Faces looking out.

  Scared.

  The crèche, she realized, where all the bio alts were trapped.

  Jess paused, momentarily pondering why that bothered her as much as it did. She studied the faces and thought about Dev being in that space, being with those scared people who were people.

  Were they people?

  They were people, Jess decided. Innocent bystanders.

  “Hang on kids,” Jess muttered then turned and went to the hatchway. She opened the clearance pad and put her hand on it.

  She hoped the other side had air, realizing as her skin hit the metal it might not. The pad went green, and the seal unlocked, a thick chunking sound as the three leaves that made the round surface split and parted.

  She sailed through, and her ears caught warning yells ahead of her. Her heartbeat sped up again and she got ready to fight. She got to the shuttle area and went from a tube into a larger, open space.

  The enemy shuttle was latched on with a makeshift gangway, full of flexible round conduit and tie downs. The vehicle itself was bumping against station, not quite connected, and there were coils of cables stretching out from it to consoles nearby.

  Two techs were holding on to a bar and trying to manipulate controls. Four agents stood by, two of them turning toward her as she entered.

  Jess released the edge of the entry and unholstered her blaster. She held it in front of her and squared her body to present the smallest surface to them. They responded, their bodies unused to the lack of gravity and the first two shots at her were wild.

  Wild and crackling against the surface of station. She fired back as they tried to get behind metal stanchions and clipped one of them in the arm, sending his gun flying across the room.

  One of the techs threw a hand tool at her. Jess aimed not at him, but at the console, and concentrated her fire on the cables running back to the ship.

  The two other age
nts were sailing her way. They were young, but the look in their eyes said they knew who she was and that made Jess smile. She tucked her arms into her body and dipped down a little, blasts of fire coming over her head so close it almost singed her.

  She released return fire, aiming carefully as her shots intersected theirs and sizzled to either side of her head. She closed in on the console, so she flipped forward again and released one hand off the gun, ready to engage.

  With a day more experience in null, she had the advantage. She twisted in mid air, grabbed a blaster and wrenched it toward her, pulling its owner and herself into a mashing collision as she aimed between her own knees at the console they were now sailing over. The shot went clean though and bisected the cables.

  Hands grabbed her, and she hauled the gun in and mounted it so she could keep fingers from closing on her throat.

  A blast hit her in the back armor, but it only served to spin her around and expose her attacker to the second blast that smacked him in the back of the neck and blew the back of his head off. “Thanks!” Jess yelled, using the now inert body as a weapon as she pulled it in a circle and slammed it into the second agent.

  An alarm started howling, and the agents shooting at her whirled as two figures came out of the tube and yelled in alarm.

  “You stupid bastard!” the second agent yelled at her. “That was the stabilizer!”

  “Too fucking bad!” Jess yelled back. She caught hold of a support spar and scaled down it toward the deck, ducking behind it as the agent fired at her. “You’re idiots for being here!”

  She got to the deck and squirmed through the cables, yanking them clear of the systems with one hand while holding on with the other.

  “Drake! Stop it!” the agent yelled. “You’re going to undock the shuttle!”

  “No shit!” Jess kicked out at one of the clamps holding a makeshift circuitry box to the railing. It spun off, spitting sparks and the acrid smell of burning electrical as it bounced and drifted. “You fucking morons latched on where you don’t belong.”

  “Drake! Drake!” The man scrambled down the support strut and caught up with her. “Stop! Wait!”

  Jess got her back to the bulk of the console and turned toward him, body poised to attack. “No,” she said in a calm, even voice. “I want you out of here.”

  The man held a hand out, palm up. “This isn’t an attack.”

  Jess looked around the station and cupped her hand to her ear as the alarms proliferated. “Really?” She recognized the agent, vaguely, as someone she’d encountered in an emplacement sometime, but his name escaped her.

  Hers hadn’t escaped him. “Drake, we didn’t know you were here,” the man said. “All we want is the process. You know what I’m talking about. We’re just here to keep people from starving.” He waved off the others. “Fix the tie downs! I’ve got this!”

  “It’s breaking loose!” one of the other agents yelled. “It’s gonna blow out!”

  Jess lunged forward and caught the young agent, hauling him around against the support strut. “You’re a bunch of idiots.”

  He took a grip on her wrist. “Do you know what you did to us?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Jess said. “What I did was what I did. The process you’re looking for ain’t here.”

  He stared at her for a long moment. “It’s here. We know the plants came from here.”

  “They did,” Jess agreed. “But that’s all. It’s not here. These people don’t have it.”

  He was young, with curly red hair and freckles and green eyes almost the color of Dev’s. He shook his head at her in denial. “We know it’s here. Otherwise why would you be? They told us you came here for it.”

  “They?”

  “Station.”

  “Idiots.” Jess sighed. “Listen, kid. It’s not here. I’m not here for it.” She swung them both around to watch the others, who were now working furiously on the tubes. “The rest of your bunch is dead. Go home.”

  “You’re lying, Drake. You always lie,” the kid spat back. “Damn you.”

  She shoved him away from the strut, toward the entrance to the shuttle. “Get out of here! What you’re looking for isn’t—” She snapped her jaw shut as she felt the impact from behind and let her body go limp as she turned with the momentum.

  Her hands hit the deck and she ducked her head and pushed backwards, shooting under the heavy body that landed in front of her. A backwards somersault brought her feet back under her and freed a hand for her blaster.

  This, a face she did know. “Stop it.” She had the gun out and pointed. “There’s someone at the controls of this thing who’s going to suck you out headfirst if you keep on, Peter.”

  He had his gun out, and it matched hers. “No one on station’s friends of yours.” He fired at her point blank, and just as he did grav surged into being, just long enough to send his aim deckward and long enough for Jess to brace and fire back. “A Drake? You shoot their moppets for fun and they know it.”

  Jess hit him square on the chest and his arms flung out sideways, his body skewing to one side. “My partner’s driving,” she said as he scrambled to get back into position. “Get the hell out. I’ve got work to do.”

  He stared at her. “Partner...then it is true. You scraped so low you ended up with one of THEM?”

  “Ah screw it.” Jess fired again, this time hitting him in the face before he could get his gun up. At the range she was at, there was no surviving it. She bounded forward and took aim at the kid. “Move.”

  “Red, c’mon!” one of the techs called out. “We need to get clear.”

  The kid looked around.

  “They’re all dead. I toldja.” Jess splashed her pre-aim on his forehead. “Get out. “

  He looked back at her. “I will kill you,” he suddenly roared and shoved away from the console right at her, faster than she could fire. She got the blaster down into its hard point as he reached her and a knife headed her way.

  Curved and jagged. Triangular teeth.

  Her vision went sharp and black and white, and she focused on that scruffy bearded face as the memory surfaced where she knew him from.

  Just a flash. Just a profile. A half turned body in Quebec City, hand raised in farewell as Joshua came back over to her, shopping bag in hand.

  Little bastard. Jess met his lunge with a grip on his wrist and hooked one leg around a support bar as she leveraged them both into a tumble. His other hand got her throat and she managed to suck in a deep breath before her airway was cut off.

  He clamped down, but the null grav robbed him of the pressure his weight would have brought to bear, and she got her knee up against his chest and straightened out her spine, using her height to force him away from her.

  The dalknife hovered in her peripheral vision, and he gripped desperately as they struggled in relative silence.

  The alarms cut off. The techs from the other side yelled a warning.

  Her own hand got to his throat and grabbed hold, and she shoved him backwards, her arms longer than his, and she saw the realization of that in his face.

  He released her, grabbed the knife with his free hand, and swung it at her.

  She kicked forward and slammed her head into his, the blade going up and over the back of her neck. She ducked her head, opened her jaws, and sank her teeth into his throat.

  He jerked hard in surprise and went to grab her, the knife floating free as she tensed and bit down hard, shaking her head as she forced her bite through his skin.

  She caught the knife and released her jaws, grabbing hold of a rail as she got both feet up against him and kicked out as hard as she could. It sent him tumbling toward the tube, droplets of blood flying from his throat to spray out and dangle in mid air.

  “Go, go, go!” one of the techs screamed. “Grab him!”

  The second hauled the kid’s flailing figure back with him toward the tube. “Let’s blow it! She’ll die!”

  They shoved him back up the white, r
ibbed tube and followed behind him.

  A shudder went through the station, and Jess kicked off in the other direction, heading for the seal and its triple leaves that had sealed behind her when she’d entered.

  She could feel something bad happening. The stresses against her body were suddenly radical, not so much returning gravity, but gravity in flux. It made her tumble through the air, and she reached out to grab the edge of some structure.

  Behind her, she heard an explosion.

  Then gravity was back with a vengeance, and she was slammed to the ground with stunning force. She heard the sound of a crack and a bang, and then she scrambled for the lock as the very air started to change shape around her.

  The hair on her skin lifted, and she felt an icy cold touch her. She had no idea what it was, but her brain hammered urgency, and instinct drove her forward as fast as she was capable of.

  The leaves opened as she reached them, and she rolled through. They closed with explosive force. A deep red light came on and bathed the hallway in blood tinge. A hooting alarm started up that rattled her nerves.

  She was breathing hard and let her hand relax, dropping the dalknife on the deck as she lay back for a moment, hot and cold flushing through her. “Fuck.”

  Her skin felt itchy and tight, and she shook herself, an uncomfortable sense of almost pain slowly releasing. Even her eyes felt dry. She blinked repeatedly until the sting faded.

  That section had decompressed. She’d been that close to being exposed to vacuum.

  Check that off the bucket list. Jess rolled over and shoved herself up, pausing to retrieve the knife as she headed farther inward to station, not stopping until she was at the edge of the inner core, where she could look back through one of the clear panels.

  The shuttle was drifting free.

  The section she’d been in was imploded, and bodies were floating out of cracks in the skin, exposed to the nothing of space.

  She slowly exhaled. “Space is freaking creepy.” She licked her lips, tasting blood on them, then turned and spat the taste out of her mouth. She turned and started back toward control. A few steps on, though, she paused and looked down through the clear plas, down at the crèche.