Partners - Book 1

by Melissa Good

  Now things were exciting and good things were happening. Bricker was gone and she saw an opportunity to really get herself ahead.

  And then there was Dev. Jess pondered her new pilot. Dev the surprisingly skilled. Dev the surprisingly courageous. If she went off line, Bain would surely put her in team with someone else, so as not to lose those significant skills. And then what?

  Would any of the other agents treat Dev the way she did? No one really liked the idea of Dev, especially now that she’d proven herself more than useful. They’d probably find a way to get her into an ‘incident’.

  She didn’t want anything bad to happen to Dev. Jess relaxed a little and felt the pain ease. She wanted to keep on working with Dev and have her be part of the success she could feel out there ahead of them, just outside her reach.

  So going to med was out. Jess very slowly sat back. Then she got to her feet and went over to the big cabinet, opening it up and fishing inside her gear pack for one of the packets of analgesic she’d stored in there. She got one out and opened it, swallowing the tabs down with a quick, dry gulp.

  “Now what?” She mused. The idea of sitting at her desk made her grimace, so she went over and picked up the info pad, carrying it with her as she slowly climbed the steps up into her relaxation area and adjusted the flexible couch, stretching out on it on her stomach and setting the pad on the shelf at the head of it so she could see the screen.

  It wasn’t entirely comfortable, but it wasn’t entirely uncomfortable and she’d gotten used to the position as her back had started to heal once they’d let her out of the hospital. She settled herself and keyed the pad controls, calling up the mission plan she’d started to work on.

  It would be a tough run. She studied the layout of the laboratory. There would be no getting in there any easy way, especially after their attack yesterday. She could see the bounce backs showing multiple layers of scan and figured the lab and all the outer defenses would be on a very heightened alert.

  So.

  Jess studied the intel report on the lab. Approach from the air wouldn’t work. She zoomed in on the facility, realizing after a minute that the latest sim scans were based on digital input that probably came from her carrier.

  From their carrier. She watched the replay, remembering that long dive and the feel of heavy Gs on her as Dev made the old bus stand up and really shake its booty.

  Jess smiled and then went back to studying the screen.

  The lab was buried into granite promontory. The defenses were hardened, and she watched the scan as a transport arrived, going through several layers of security before it was allowed to dock on an isolated landing pad, the muzzles of heavy blasters visible surrounding it.

  She watched as guards came out and inspected the transport’s manifest Then the pilot was remanded back inside, and a troop of unfriendlies came out to offload whatever the contents or people were.

  No easy way in that route.

  Jess studied the promontory. If the facility was anything like the one she was in, there were infrastructure components she might be able to take advantage of. She knew they had to generate power and feed themselves not too differently than Interforce did. The granite cliffs likely held caverns full of phosphorescent organisms, the ultraviolet lit growing platforms, the captive fisheries and the rakers of seaweed. Or else some form of equivalent technology to let them feed themselves and create the power needed to run the scientific technology.

  She tapped a request into the pad and waited for a response, her body slowly relaxing as the pain medication took effect. As she tapped on the edge of the shelf her mind drifted. She found herself wondering what Dev was up to.

  That puzzled her. Why would she care? Why should she care? Jess frowned, but nevertheless, she keyed over to the locater and tapped in Dev’s name. After a brief pause, the locater came back with a coordinate, and she grunted, satisfied Dev had taken her advice and gone to rad.

  Hm.

  The thought of the warm glow suddenly sidetracked her, and after a pause, she got up off the couch and took the pad with her, easing down the steps and crossing over to where she’d left her indoor boots.

  Putting them on, she went to the door and through it, heading for the rad area through sparsely populated halls. Why not get a dose of rad herself? It had been several days, after all, and she could just as well go over the plans flat on her stomach in her dose room where at least she’d get something useful out of her time while she waited for the intel to come back.

  The drugs made the pain bearable. It remained as a dull throbbing, but at a level where she could put it aside, and it didn’t affect her moving and walking. Even her headache had faded a little and she sighed in relief as she passed through the central corridor and turned right down into rec.

  A good portion of the citadel was at the attack site, either cleaning up, or taking readings, making reports, developing plans to prevent it from happening again. There was no one there to see her arrive at her door, putting her palm on the lock and passing inside.

  Once the door shut, she paused and stood there thinking.

  Time was of the essence. Why not get even more done at the same time? She walked over to the com and typed in a code. After she heard a faint buzz, she leaned closer. “Dev?”

  There was a brief pause, and then the buzz stopped. “Yes?” Dev’s voice came back. “I’m here in the sun space, as you suggested.”

  Jess nodded to herself. “I’m in mine,” she said. “Mind if I join you? I want to go over the plan.”

  There was another brief pause. “I don’t mind,” Dev said. “That would be nice. It’s sort of making me want to go to sleep in here.”

  “Yeah. It does that,” Jess said. “Be there in a sec.” She released the comm and turned, leaving her space and walking the short distance down the corridor to the one assigned to Dev. She put her palm on the lock and the door opened, letting her inside.

  She paused in the antechamber, setting her pad down and glanced into the main section. Dev was relaxing on one of the couches and for a moment Jess felt a little lightheaded and short of breath. “Damn drugs,” she muttered. “How do you like this?” She added, in a louder voice.

  “It feels nice, though it’s different than being in the real sun.”

  “Is it?” Jess stripped out of her jumpsuit and inhaled sharply, as an injudicious motion sent a bolt of pain through her shoulder. She waited for the pain to ease, and then she folded the suit up and put it on a shelf, and added her boots to it. “What’s the sun like?”

  “Well.” Dev turned her head as Jess entered and their eyes met. “It’s...um...a lot brighter for one thing,” she said, after a pause to clear her throat. “When it comes into the crèche, all the regular lights go off, and it’s just...it’s different.”

  “Mm.” Jess eased slowly down on the chair next to the lounge Dev was on. “I remember reading that it was yellow.”

  Dev shook her head briefly. “In space, it’s white. It feels good.” She looked up at the ceiling. “This feels good too, but not the same way.” She looked back over at Jess. “It’s too dark to read from.” She held up her book.

  “What is that?”

  “It’s a book,” Dev said, with a touch of hesitation. “You have them here, right?”

  “We have them, but they’re on plas.” Jess peered at it. “Can I see it?”

  Dev passed it over to her. “One of my teachers gave it to me.”

  Jess put her pad down and touched the book, opening it and running her fingertips over it. The pages were thin and an odd scent came off them as she peered at the writing. It was, as Dev had said, too dim to really read it, but she could make sense of the words if she concentrated on them.

  Dev sat quietly, watching her. Jess’s head was bent over the book as it was cradled in her hands, one elbow leaning on the chair arm with her legs tucked up half under her.

  The brown sigils were very visible on her arms, but now that Dev could see all of her
, she saw scars scattered over her skin and thought about how much all of that must have hurt.

  There was one long scar from her right knee to her ankle on the inside of her leg that made Dev grimace just to see it.

  “I’ve read it a hundred times,” Dev said, into the silence that had built around them. “I find something new every time.”

  Jess looked up from the book and smiled. “I haven’t read one of these since I was very small.” She handed the book back. “And I’ve never read this one.” She glanced at the cover. “Lord of the Rings.”

  “Would you like to borrow it?” Dev asked. “It’s really a good story.”

  “Later,” Jess said. “I’d love to.” She shifted and reached for the pad, halting in mid motion and closing her eyes, then opening them and exhaling. “Don’t think I’m going to get a chance to read it in the next couple days.” She lifted the pad and triggered it. “Here’s the deal.”

  Dev put the book down and leaned on the arm of the lounge she was on, studying the pad. After a moment though, she looked up at Jess’s face, surprised to see some tension there. One hand was holding her head up, as the other tapped the pad, and there was an awkwardness about her posture.

  “So, this is what we’re gonna do, if the intel comes back,” Jess said. “This is the edge of the Greenland islands. That’s where the fishing fleets work out of.”

  “I see.”

  “Tough place, but...” Jess tapped the screen. “I’ve got some remote family here, and we can cross over into enemy territory in this little group where they all trade together.”

  “How does that assist us?”

  “These boats, they trade with the bad guys.” Jess drew a line on the screen. “I’m going to get taken on board as a mate, and get into the lab when they go to trade fish to them.”

  Dev considered that. “I see.”

  “What I’ll need you to do is hide out there and keep comm open, then come get my ass out of there after I finish the job. Got it?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Depends,” Jess said. “If I can steal the tech, I will. If not, I’ll destroy it.” She studied the pad and then looked up at Dev. “I’d rather steal it. Then we get the benefit.”

  “This sounds difficult,” Dev said. “What if they find out who you are? Will they be angry?” She watched Jess shift a little, setting the pad down and leaning back in the chair, as the warm, purple light bathed her.

  “Chances are they’ll find out, and sure, they’ll be angry,” Jess said. “That’s part of the game.” She studied Dev. Dev was stretched out on the couch, but there was a furrow in her brow and she looked a little perturbed. “But the goal is to get this job done. It’s important to us, because if they take this technology forward, they could start reclaiming land and that means these skirmishes we do might turn into something a lot bloodier.”

  Dev’s head cocked to one side a bit.

  “There aren’t enough of us left to have a war, Dev,” Jess said, after a long silence between them. “But livable land means more people and more resources. Then they’ll have enough bodies to have a war and we won’t.”

  “This is going to sound kind of foolish, or maybe ignorant,” Dev said, slowly. “But wouldn’t it be more productive to cooperate and assist everyone in making progress?”

  Jess smiled faintly. “Yes, it would. But that’s not how we’re wired, Dev. “

  Dev considered the statement. “I will do my best to assist in the plan. I hope you will achieve your goals safely.”

  Jess sighed. “Yeah, me too.” She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees. “We’ll have to do some trading in the islands and I’ll need to put together a cover,” she said. “And make sure we can cover up that necklace of yours. That won’t work out there.”

  “Are there bio alts on the outside?” Dev asked.

  Jess shook her head. “In the citadels, and in the admin centers, yes. But not in the outlands. They don’t even know what a bio alt is. I said cover it so they don’t cut your head off and try to steal it.”

  Dev’s pale eyes widened.

  Jess chuckled wryly. “Don’t worry. They can’t break into a carrier. Yet.” She leaned back again, the pain having subsided into a mere dull throb again. “I think this is going to work, Dev. We’ve never hit them this way before, and I’ve got a lot of chances to back out if it looks like it’s going to crash and burn.”

  “Have you ever done that?”

  Jess looked over to find those interesting green eyes watching her, the faintest of smiles on Dev’s face. “Done what, back out?”

  “Yes.”

  Jess grinned, rakishly. “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.” Dev grinned back. “I’ll do my best to take care of your ass, then.”

  They both chuckled, and their eyes met. After a moment, Jess looked down at her pad and smiled. “I definitely feel safer now.” She lifted her hand and rubbed her face. “Rad makes you warm, huh?”

  Dev considered that. “Yes, it does, now that you mention it.”

  Jess looked up again and they studied each other briefly. “Ah, yeah. Okay, so uh...” Jess eased back into her couch. “What was that you said about the book?”

  DEV ENTERED THE gym feeling happy. The big facility was nearly empty, and she went over to the changing area, finding the cabinet with her name on it and changing into the short jumper and shoes she found inside.

  She wasn’t really sure why she was happy, but the rad session had been enjoyable, and she’d appreciated the fact that Jess had stopped to let her see the plan and talk to her about it. It was very different than the rescue, and it had a lot of sneaky bits to it she found really interesting.

  Jess had a clever mind. She reminded Dev a little of some of her favorite teachers in the crèche, who always pushed her to look at things from different angles.

  Jess seemed to like angles, too, and when she was being extra clever, she tended to smile a lot.

  She liked that smile. Dev closed the cabinet and entered the exercise area. The gym was multileveled, and had different sections intended for different purposes, including a climbing obstacle course, a running space, a load bearing area and, to her surprise, since she hadn’t seen it when Jess showed her the gym, a huge tank of water.

  As she watched, a tall man she didn’t know jumped into it, disappearing and then surfacing and starting to move along the top of the water using his arms and legs. “Wow,” Dev muttered to herself. “What’s that all about?”

  “Huh?”

  Dev turned to find Brent there, his body covered in sweat and a towel wrapped around his neck. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.” She pointed at the tank.

  Brent looked. “Oh. The pool,” he said. “Yeah, it’s all right. If you like that sorta thing.” He regarded the man in the tank. “I’m not much for swimming. I sink like a rock.” He glanced at her. “You?”

  Dev shook her head. “I’ve never done anything like that. Water was very precious in the crèche.”

  “You should ask Jess to teach you. She’s a fish. She and some of the others go down into the tunnels and swim in the ocean down there. Crazy nuts.”

  “I might ask,” she said. “I like the shower thing in our quarters. Jess mentioned something about the water in the bottom of the citadel. She took me out to see the ocean and I can’t really imagine going into that. It looked dangerous.”

  Brent snorted. “It is dangerous, but what the hell difference does that make to us?” He said. “Everything we do is dangerous. Hell, Jess threw an antipersonnel mine in the damn hallway this morning. If it’d been keyed wrong, we’d all be dead.”

  “The purple thing?”

  Brent nodded. “Keyed to our scan. But they get it wrong sometimes. That’s why it killed those goons. They aren’t us.”

  Us. Dev thought about that word. “Yes,” she said. “I’m glad it worked out.”

  Brent continued on his way to the changing room, and D
ev turned and headed into the gym. She was drawn toward the tank, though, and walked over to it, kneeling at the side and putting her hand into the water. The man who had been in it was gone, and now the surface was still, and quiet.

  It was pleasant. Neither warm nor cold. She tried to imagine being completely immersed in it.

  She couldn’t, but she really wanted to, so without any further thought she jumped into the water tank headfirst.

  It was, without doubt, the weirdest feeling she’d ever had, as the water closed over her and she was caught in a swirl of it, pushing and bubbling around her as she popped to the surface. Her head broke out of the liquid as she instinctively took a breath.

  So weird. So strange. Dev moved her arms as she started sinking, pushing against the water to keep her head up in the air. She could feel the resistance against her motion and cupped her hands, moving her legs as well.

  Experimentally, she stopped moving. Sure enough, she immediately sank under the surface, glad she’d taken a breath before her head went under. She opened her eyes, and felt the water sting against them, but also found to her delight that she could see after a fashion.

  Then her chest started hurting, so she pushed with her hands again and got back to the surface of the water, spluttering a little and shaking her head as she blinked the water out of her eyes.

  “Hey!” Brent rushed over. “Are you nuts?” He went to his knees at the edge of the water tank and held his hand out. “Here! Grab on!”

  “I’m all right.” Dev waved her hands around to keep afloat. “I just wanted to see what this was like.” She pushed the water away from her and moved over to where Brent was kneeling. “It’s nice.”

  “You are crazy,” Brent said. “They picked the right one of you to match with Jess. She’s crazy too.” He sat down on the concrete floor as Dev got close enough to grab the edge of the tank. “You coulda hit your head and drowned.”