Of Sea and Stars (Partners Book 3)

by Melissa Good

What would she do if it returned neg? Was there any point in doing anything? Dev stared at the controls blankly. Would she then just...her eyes tracked to the door. She was sure the guards would make her dead, and the idea came to her that maybe if Jess was gone that would be okay.

  It was odd and very confusing, and she suspected very incorrect.

  With a breath she tapped in the commands and executed, forcing herself to stare at the screen. She ignored the pounding and crackling outside as the scan reached out through all the rock, past the guards and the weapons and some very odd returns from inside the Bay, and came back with the only thing she actually cared about.

  Blinking dot, wiremap, Drake, J.

  Dev hit the jets and the carrier lifted. She rotated it, watching the big screen wiremap of the area around her. The room filled with people shooting at her with blaster rifles that did nothing much to the carrier’s heavy shielding.

  Then the scan alerted, and she saw the map redraw with an onrushing clump of bodies carrying something that came back red on the boards. She hit the mains without thinking about it, filling the cavern with energy as she aimed for the opening and felt, rather than heard, a huge disruption behind her.

  The carrier lunged forward. She barely kept control as she unlatched the forward screen so she could see realtime, every surface rumbling and shuddering as she shoved the throttles forward and was in clear air, rocketing away from the cliff wall as she picked up an energy release coming at her.

  She got altitude, sending the carrier skyward at a radical angle and then going half null as she brought the craft in a circle and saw the entrance to the landing bay disintegrate as it blew outward, followed by a fireball flaring out with a bombastic roar.

  Everyone inside, she realized, had been made dead. Dev banked the carrier and ducked behind the cliff face, running a quick scan for anyone in the area. The system caught a lot of debris, and as she flew along the rock, she saw small figures beneath her running for cover and damage all along the homestead.

  Jess was in there. Dev felt a sense of relief and it surprised her to find her hands shaking. Jess was not made dead. Yet. Jess was possibly depending on her to help. Dev was not entirely sure what she was supposed to help do, or who was in the right, or what was correct.

  But she would figure it out.

  “PSST.”

  The shaking finally dragged her upward and out of the swirling confusion of darkness, and Jess became aware again of her surroundings.

  Water hit her face. That sped up the process, and by the time the second wave headed toward her she opened her eyes and tried to lift a hand to defend herself.

  That was painful.

  “Get back!” A voice sounded nervously near her. “Oh crap did we screw up!”

  Jess blinked at that, and the blurry world around her slowly came into focus, and at the same time she became aware of the fact she hurt like hell.

  Six small faces peered nervously back at her. “Cuz, we’re sorry,” the nearest said. “We didn’t mean to drop it on you.”

  “No, we was trying to get them,” a second said.

  Jess found herself on the ground next to a heavy anchor lying on the floor of the central stairs, a lot of rubble around it. She tried to sit up and then stopped as the darkness threatened to overwhelm her again. “Shit.”

  “Cuz, we gotta get you in the safe area,” the first youngster said. “Them guys find you they’re gonna splat you for sure.”

  Jess covered her eyes with one hand then they all jerked as they heard a sudden and violent explosion not that far away. The blood drained from Jess’s face as the sound profile became something she recognized.

  A carrier had imploded.

  Everything got very quiet inside her head. She stared up at the skylight far above her as a rain of rocky debris rushed into the central hall and began to cover them, the six adolescents holding their arms over them in wide eyed alarm.

  “Dev,” Jess whispered.

  DEV FELT A sense of familiar confidence settle over her as she got all her controls settled and started up long range scan from the carrier. It was a relief to feel programming settling solidly in place and to know exactly what she was doing.

  Not like the shuttle at all. Everything there had been in question, and she knew a moment of discomfort at the notion that everything in her life now might be just like that. Was that how natural borns felt all the time?

  Dev turned her attention back to the boards and adjusted the trim of her craft as she brought the carrier back around from the north to approach Drake’s Bay again. She needed to find Jess now and find out how she could help her.

  It was raining hard, and she heard the impact against the roof of the carrier along with the low rumble of thunder overhead. She tuned scan and directed it outward, finding six craft inbound toward her, too far as yet to identify.

  Coming from the direction of Base Ten, though. Dev aimed her course down behind the rock walls of the homestead, searching for an opening she might be able to take advantage of. Finding Jess now was the most important thing, as there was no way for her to defend the carrier aside from flying it.

  No way to trigger the weapons from her station, even if she knew how to use them, which she didn’t. No way for that matter for Jess to drive the carrier from her weapons position aft. It needed both of them.

  Both.

  Dev checked the scan and saw Jess’s code, buried inside the rock wall. She quickly built a wiremap around the area pulled from her portable scanner. She realized Jess was inside the void that was the huge stairwell, and she tipped the carrier and went up the cliff face at top speed.

  She opened the outside sound monitors and heard the rush of the waves beneath her and a booming thump along with the far off sounds of impacts.

  Then she was at the top of the cliff and she slowed, coming up over the space in the wall where she’d seen light coming in when inside.

  Several things happened. The alarms in her scan went off, and her shields activated, just in time to disrupt a heavy blast from two security defender craft coming right at her.

  At the same time, she hit the lights on the bottom of the carrier and lit up the plas surface underneath her. Comms crackled into her ear, urgently yelling.

  The oncoming security craft kept up a barrage, and after a moment she turned off the lights and shoved the throttles forward, building up speed quickly as she headed right into the fire.

  Her shields held and she went head on to the nearer defender, getting close enough to see the helmeted pilots who swerved out of her way at the last moment.

  She went over them and then reversed course, tumbling around one-hundred-eighty degrees and boosting the engines to send her carrier right over the top of the one who’d swerved, as they twisted frantically unable to outrun her.

  She felt the scream of metal and a thumping crunch as the shielded bottom of the carrier scraped over the defender, and it pitched and headed for the deck, trailing smoke.

  “Holy shit, did you see that!” Comms erupted into her ear piece as she tuned in to Interforce bands. “What the hell!”

  “Who is...oh fuck!” the voices chattered on the wire. “That’s 270006!”

  Dev dodged the second defender who was trying to get a line on her. She tuned the comms and searched for an open line to Drake’s Bay. “BR270006 to Drake’s Bay control.” She dumped and went sideways as she detected a blast coming from the side of the mountain and saw blue clad bodies on the ledge overlooking the sea.

  Nothing but static answered, and she frowned. She heard an alarm and looked to her right to find the other defender coming right at her, firing all of its guns. She boosted the shields and inverted, curving around and flying under the defender as its guns thumped against her lower shields.

  Comms went out. She glanced over to see the channels now closed to her. Then another alert went off, and she saw the six incoming signals resolving, wiremap tracing them out as craft just like hers.

  Suboptimal.
The defender crafts were less heavily shielded and had smaller guns than hers did, but the six incoming figures were her equal, and they had gunners inside who could target her.

  She was running out of time. But first there were these gunners on the platform, and she cut power to the engines and let the carrier tumble down the side of the cliff toward them. At the last possible moment, she cut the mains in again and struggled to retain control as the booming roar against the rocks shook loose a thick ledge and sent it plunging downward.

  A twist and a roll, and she was at sea level, headed away from the cliff. Behind her the scan showed still falling rocks, and there were no more blasts from the ledge.

  She curved around and started back, now seeing an opening at the bottom of the mountain just at the waterline. Was that where the ships went? She aimed for it and ran along the tops of the waves as the six targets came into close scan proximity and she started to get pinged.

  Scan alert detected inbound fire. A second later full strength blasters erupted on either side of the carrier, impacting the water and sending it boiling, and her own draft lifted waves on either side of her passage.

  Very suboptimal. She aimed for the opening and hoped there was something large enough on the other side of it. The shields started to react just as she cut mains and hit the landing jets, sensing something passing over her head as the carrier flashed inside the cliff face, and she went from the rains roar to inky darkness that lit up suddenly as she turned on the carrier’s external lamps.

  Proximity alarms, loud and urgent and she automatically compensated, reflexes trimming the carrier and turning it sideways as solid surfaces loomed up in her vision.

  Too close. Too small. She got control of the carrier just in time to weave through massive pillars that subdivided the cavern, scraping past stone on either side with a squeal of tortured metal.

  Motion. Panic. She ducked the carrier down and got her forward momentum stopped, skids extended to land on a tiny patch of clear rock in the only place possible that could take her.

  Big double thump and a bounce, and then she let go of the throttles, their surfaces slick with sweat as she caught her breath.

  She heard running boots and yelling outside. She looked up over the console to see a crowd of figures entering the cavern from the inside, all carrying large, extended barreled guns she had no programming at all for. They started to haul up and point the guns at her, when one of them pointed at the side, and then they all raced past her and started firing past the carrier.

  Confusing. But better than being shot at. Dev focused her eyes on the scan console, anxiously looking at the readouts and searching for Jess’s bio marker.

  Yes. There it was, surrounded by others. A quick adjustment showed them to share that distinctive pattern that was from this place. She let out a little breath of relief then looked outside the windscreen, trying to decide what to do next.

  The carrier seemed to be in a relatively safe place. She got up and went to the hatch, glad it was on the side away from the opening where many people were now shooting. After a pause, she took her service pack from the storage hatch and put it on.

  She studied the weapons rack. Should she bring Jess her big gun? She hefted it experimentally then slung it over her back.

  It hit the back of her legs and made it difficult to move, so she reluctantly put it back. Then she triggered the hatch and hopped out, wincing at the sudden barrage of loud sounds all around her. The carrier shielded her from view, and she started for the entryway at a purposeful trot.

  JESS WASN’T REALLY sure how she’d gotten where she was. She’d faded out in the hall, and now she lifted her head and found herself in the family kitchen, sprawled on the floor, alone.

  She put her head back down and looked up at the kitchen ceiling, aware of booms and roars outside, the pale light of a stormy midday coming in the small window carved in the rock wall to her right.

  Her back felt like it had been dragged over stone, and a slight look left showed tracks leading to the closed door to the interior that probably were from her boots.

  She lay there breathing quietly. She considered making an effort to do something about the situation, but found little desire to do so.

  It was a strange feeling.

  She slowly rolled over onto her side and caught the edge of the table. She pulled herself up onto her knees and felt the lingering pain of the zapping she’d taken. Her skull also throbbed from the kid’s misguided attack on her.

  Really misguided. Jess tentatively released one hand off the table and reached back to touch the back of her head where a large lump was still present.

  Anchor would have killed anyone non Drake she suspected. She thought about that huge explosion and wished it had put her out of her misery. Nothing was going to come out of this worth being alive to see, not the destruction of the homestead, not the killing of her kin.

  Not Dev.

  Jess’s breathing shortened, and she turned and slid onto the ledge of stone the window was cut into, staring past the battered plas at the half circle bay full of rain and whitecaps, very surprised to find a stinging in her eyes and tears coming for the first time since she’d been a small, confused child.

  It was strange and it hurt. This was something they bred, beat, and trained out of them, and yet, here in this moment, Jess knew sadness and a pain of the heart she hadn’t been aware she was actually capable of.

  She let her head rest against the stone and stared out over the bay, without really looking at anything. She remembered bits and pieces of her childhood here in random sepia toned images that brought flashes of phantom sounds only she could hear.

  Aunties yelling in the kitchen.

  A cousin crying from a bumped head.

  Her father singing to her.

  A booming roar shook the wall, and her eyes tracked outside, recognizing the distinctive boom of a carrier arriving out of the speed of sound and then finding a flicker of motion that moved right across the front of the bay.

  Chased by others.

  Jess blinked and sat up a little, seeing the first carrier swerve and change direction in evasion and speed away, chased by two others. Who and what? The craft were too far for her to see any hull markings, only the distinctive shape of them identifying Interforce.

  Rogue?

  Then she saw the craft reverse course without warning and zip between its chasers, and her heart pounded as the craft rotated to accept fire on its bottom shields before heading for the deck at top speed.

  Could there be two pilots that crazy skilled? She slid to the other side to follow its course, eyes widening as she realized it was going for the ship cavern, which had no entry space for it. Two pilots that studiously insane?

  The carrier disappeared into the cavern opening and she held her breath, waiting for an explosion that didn’t come. The two chasers veered wildly and only barely avoided the rock face, one plunging into the water and coming to an abrupt halt as it hit bottom.

  No. That could only be one pilot. Jess felt a sudden flush of emotion she really didn’t have a word in her head for that nevertheless made her lightheaded and brought back some energy to her aching bones.

  That fluid flight path born in space, that could only be Dev.

  Dev, Dev, Dev.

  “Fuck.” Jess shoved herself upright and stood a moment to catch her balance before she started for the door. She ignored the horrific pain as training reasserted itself. She paused to pick up a fish pike to use as a weapon, its spear barbed point rising higher than her head.

  She pushed the kitchen door open and headed up the hallway to central then paused before she headed out.

  Blaster fire. Concussive explosions in return.

  She wanted no part of it.

  A fuzzy memory surfaced, and she turned and went down a side corridor, unlocking and pushing aside a metal hatch that exposed a long, round hole in the rock with a rusted, fragile iron ladder sunk into its surface. She let the spear fall down its
length and then took hold of the bars to follow.

  A rush of air brought moisture and the sea to her, bathing her skin in salt tinged with the faintest hint of the offgassing of an Interforce carrier.

  “OKAY PEOPLE.” DOCTOR Dan finished hot wiring the entry, and it slid open, emitting a gust of death tainted air. “Let’s go.” He glanced behind him to the waiting crowd, quiet and intent.

  The fifty kids from the Bay were with him, holding their sticks and bats and whatnot, vibrating with excitement, even though they knew the odds they were facing.

  “Let’s see now.” Kurok led the way into the outer cavern, a storage point full now of dead bodies and scattered plas boxes.

  “Other side’s locked,” one of the kids said, knowledgably. Can ya crank it, Doc?”

  “Give it my best.” Doctor Dan moved through the big cavern and heard concussive shocks from the outside he didn’t recognize. “Wonder what that is?”

  “Mortars,” a second kid told him. “Cuz musta gotten the armory open.”

  “Yeah!” Voices lifted in excitement. “Hurry before they get ’em all and we ain’t got a chance!”

  Armory! Kurok put a hand on his head in realization. Of course. That’s what they needed Jess for, to open the locks on all those old weapons. “Holy crap.” He sped up and they got to the inner lock, a solid red across the board.

  He tossed a scanner down on the surface and started it up. “Anyone got an alternate way in they’d like to tell me about before I start hacking?” he called over his shoulder, not really with much hope. “Aside from not using the main entrance and getting blown up?”

  One of the kids squirmed forward, a red haired moppet with a heavily freckled face. “There’s a surf tube,” he said. “You handle that?”

  Kurok glanced over his shoulder at the waiting kids and the quiet bio alts behind them. “Where does that put us?” He asked after a pause.

  “Ship base. But if we get a surge we’re fish,” the kid said. “Comes in from there, out near the wall to water release.”