Partners - Book 1

by Melissa Good

  Dev looked over her shoulder again, her pale eyebrows lifting, and then lowering in some confusion.

  “Never mind.” Jess started laughing. “Boot the engines up.”

  Dev focused her attention back on her job. The rain had lessened to a degree that she could, with some confidence, activate the landing jets again and ease out from under the ledge. It was hard to concentrate though, and she had to take a few long breaths and release them before she set her hands on the throttles and gently ignited the main engines. She felt them rumble into life, a bit rough as she trimmed the power leads.

  She sort of felt like that too, like there were things surging inside her that needed to be trimmed a little. Dev pulled her headset on and settled the ear cups, flicking through the settings and scanning the comp to make sure they hadn’t gotten any messages relayed after the storm.

  After a moment, her eyes flicked up to the mirror mounted over her position and she found Jess looking back at her in the reflection. Then she had to look forward, and inched the throttles to bring the carrier around the edge of the escarpment and back around in the other direction.

  They would pass to the west of Quebec and then up into the northern archipelago to the North Station. Dev had the coordinates locked in, and she let out one final deep breath before she nudged the throttles forward and focused in on her task.

  Boy, it was hard. Dev took a drink from her container and put it back in its swinging holder. She studied her consoles a couple of times, until her brain finally lurched out of its bemusement and sharpened as the readings and panel displays triggered her programming in a somewhat belated manner.

  She looked out the forward screens, seeing nothing much but gray sky and equally gray land. They were traveling over rock plateaus that were slick and wet with the falling rain, their tops scarred and shaped by the continual impact with the water.

  After a few minutes traveling, Dev felt her shoulders relax and she was better able to focus. She ran through her checks and had the systems rescan for damages, her mind running over the readouts as she took in a weather report. The heavy clouds they’d huddled under had passed over, but she could see on the out scan there was another storm moving in.

  Dutifully, she reported that to Jess, feeling a prickle between her shoulder blades as she heard the soft click and slither of her partner’s restraints coming loose. She flexed her hands a trifle as Jess came to stand next to her, anticipating and getting the friendly pressure of a hand on her shoulder. “There.” She pointed at the out scan.

  “I see,” Jess said. “Damn it.” She looked at the powerful lines, the dark reds and oranges telling their own tales of the strong electrical forces buried inside them. “These storms are getting outrageous. We used to have two, three days between them. Now we’re lucky if we go twelve or twenty hours.”

  “Why is that?” Dev asked.

  “No one really knows.” Jess leaned on the back of her chair. “We’ve lost so much damn science. Well, we’ll have to either make it a very short stop at North or find a place on the ice to hole up if that line comes in fast as it looks like.”

  Dev’s brows hiked up a little. “Hole up on the ice? In the carrier?”

  “Sure.” Jess glanced back over her shoulder. “I packed cold kits. Includes lined sleeping bags in case we get caught out.”

  “I see.” Dev trimmed the carrier’s flight, taking them around a tall peak in a gentle curve, very aware of the hand casually resting on her shoulder as Jess studied the comp.

  Ahead of them she saw a long line of craggy bluffs, and the western edges of them had thick gray clouds draped over them. She checked her navigation readouts and let her elbow rest on her chair arm, feeling a bit of warmth through her suit as she pressed against Jess’s thigh. “Thirty minutes.”

  “Mm.” Jess gave her shoulder a squeeze, then she retreated back to the back of the carrier, starting to rummage around in the equipment locker. “Once you get within ten, they’ll contact you on sideband twelve,” she said. “Then ask you to switch to a mainline channel for traffic control.”

  Dev peered at the empty sky. “Is it a busy place?”

  “No,” Jess said. “They’re just regulation sticklers. Just move to whatever channel they want, and let them call the numbers for you when you go in. They’ve got a carrier bay like we do, only smaller.”

  “All right,” Dev said. “May I ask you something?”

  Jess stopped rummaging. “What makes you think you have to ask permission?”

  Dev cleared her throat. “I didn’t mean to cause you discomfort,” she said. “I was just wondering if the people at the location we’re traveling to know I’m a bio alt.”

  Jess came back up to the front of the carrier. She leaned on the back of Dev’s chair. “Why?”

  Dev risked a glance up and almost didn’t look back down at the console. “I just wondered. It’s interesting to see how different people react.”

  Jess looked thoughtfully through the rain lashed window. Would they know? Dev had only been at the citadel for a few days, and the stations were by tradition autonomous from each other. The less you knew about the structure of the organization, the less you could tell anyone about it.

  Only the Old Man knew it all. “Unless Bain messaged them, they probably don’t know. But your creds will tell them when you come into the complex. Does it bother you?”

  Dev shook her head. “Does it bother you?” She again turned the question on Jess.

  “No. But the Norther’s are old fashioned. It might damn well bother them.” Jess smiled, in a not entirely nice way. “And that could be a lot of fun.”

  “Fun?” Dev glanced up at her again.

  “Fun.” Jess gently ruffled her hair, then she went back to her seat and dropped into it, extending her legs out and crossing them at the ankles. “Almost as fun as an ice cave might be.”

  DEV WONDERED ABOUT the ice cave, as she piloted the carrier along its assigned route toward the North Station escarpment. She could already see it on the horizon, a lonely pinnacle of rock that was an island in the surrounding storm tossed seas. It was stark and forbidding, on the outside not really different from the citadel they’d come from but smaller, and more remote.

  A soft chime sounded in her ear cup. “Approaching vehicle, identify,” the voice demanded, low, and with an interesting lilt to it.

  “BR27006 approaching from the southwest,” Dev said. “Requesting entry and landing.”

  “Stand by.”

  Dev kept the carrier on course, but slowed her engines a bit as she flicked off the auto nav and took possession of her throttles. She saw the alert on comp as they were scanned, imagining that she could feel the beam as it passed over them. She acknowledged the alert, and keyed in their ident beacon in response that would provide the encrypted codes to the station’s comp.

  Jess was leaned back in her seat, her hands folded over her stomach and her eyes half closed. “Probably keep us circling out here for an hour.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Just jerks sometimes,” Jess said. “They’re the furthest on the edge, makes them a little nuts.”

  “I see.” Dev studied the readouts of their own scan, which was picking up transports closer in to the station, and the signatures of turbo generators near the bottom of the cliff. “Do they think we might hurt them?”

  Jess shrugged. “Meh.” She wriggled into a slightly more comfortable spot on her surprisingly comfortable new seat. “Sometimes between stations there’s a lot of ego. You know what that is?”

  “Yes,” Dev said. She glanced at Jess in the mirror, wondering if it was just the reflection that made it seem that way or if Jess’s legs were really that long.

  “BR27006, ident confirmed. Please approach and switch comms to channel twenty-three, sideband five.”

  “Ahahaha. We got lucky,” Jess said. “They don’t have a prick on duty this time.”

  Dev couldn’t match her programmed definition of prick to anythi
ng applicable so she merely settled her ear cup and keyed the mic on. “North station, this is BR27006, acknowledge. Switching channels.” She made the adjustment and reacquired the station signal, then saw the landing beacon start to transmit and locked onto it.

  So far so good. She ran a set of checks to make sure all the systems she’d need to land the carrier were functioning, and that they hadn’t taken any damage during the storm. Everything seemed nominal, so she boosted up the speed a little and headed toward the gaping hole in the side of the pinnacle where the beacon was leading her. “The entrance isn’t on top like ours.”

  “No. No flat surface up there,” Jess said. “That’s a natural cavern entrance they modified. Smaller, but at least the rain doesn’t kick you in the ass when they open the doors like in ours.”

  Ours.

  Dev liked hearing that. Ours. We. Us. She descended to the level of the landing bay opening and centered her approach as the big doors started to open. She could see the pale blue light inside the cavern and she focused on the opening, where a dim blue tracer was indicating an in path.

  She cut in the landing jets and put the engines in idle as she came into the cavern, seeing carrier landing pads below her not that different from the citadel’s. “North landing control, this is BR27006, requesting pad assignment.” She cleared the entrance and let the carrier slide to one side of it, putting solid rock at her back.

  “You fly nice,” Jess said. “You never bounce my kidneys.”

  Dev flicked a glance in the mirror. “Thanks,” she said. “I think?”

  “BR27006. Landing assignment D23.” The comm brought her attention back. “Stand by after landing for security scan. Remain sealed until notified.”

  “Mph,” Jess snorted. “Oh look the jerk woke up.”

  Dev located their assigned pad and gently lowered the carrier onto it, spooling down the main engines and cutting off the landing jets as the bottom skids touched and the carrier came to a halt. She secured the power systems and safed the weapons, glancing outside as she did so. “Oh.”

  Jess lifted her head and peered out the windows. A ring of security guards were surrounding them, heavy rifles pointed at the carrier. “Ugh. Idiots.” She relaxed and let her eyes close again. “Just chill.”

  “I’m pretty warm, thanks.” Dev sat back and loosened the chair restraints. She copied the logs to storage, and did the rest of her shutdown checklist, doing her best to ignore the ring of muzzles facing her outside. She saw a light come on and she studied it. “Jess, they are asking for a comp interface.”

  “Yeah?” Jess released her restraints and got up, coming forward to lean on Dev’s chair and peer at the board. “Anything in comp?”

  “No. I hadn’t even plotted our next destination. Just this one,” Dev said. “Some weather reports, is all.”

  “You know how to set a trace?”

  Dev smiled. “Yes.” She touched her keypads in a rapid sequence. “Let them in?”

  “Yup.” Jess leaned further, watching as Dev set up the connection. She studied the screen as the North systems linked in, watching the request for information intently. “Want to know where we’ve been eh?” She glanced outside at the security guards. “Good thing we didn’t take a joyride into the arctic first.”

  After a moment, the connection shut down, and the audio came live in Dev’s earpiece. “BR27006, you are cleared. Please prepare to egress.”

  “Aw. Guess we told the truth,” Jess, said, with a mock pout. “Next time remind me to slip a trip to space in there, see if they catch it.” She pushed herself upright, and went to the weapons rack, sliding her handgun into its holster tucked under her arm and picking up the heavy blaster and seating it into the flexible web system that went down her right leg. “Let’s go, partner.”

  Dev stood and made sure her insignia was straight, then she uncoupled her leads from the carrier and clipped the ends in place as she walked over to join Jess. She paused behind her as Jess also paused, her hands on the hatch controls. “I’m ready.”

  “Don’t let them freak you out,” Jess said. “Just ignore what they say if they start talking crap.”

  Dev nodded, and then she twitched a little as Jess triggered the hatch and it popped outward with a thump and hiss. The ramp extended and they walked down it, just as two jump suited figures appeared from between two other carriers and approached them.

  The security guards had withdrawn, save two that were stationed on either side of an inner door. Dev kept Jess’s face in her peripheral vision, watching her reaction to gauge what was going on. She seemed relaxed though, so Dev relaxed and waited just behind her as the welcoming party approached.

  It was two men, and the one in front was dressed as Jess was, the one behind him was in a standard jumpsuit in a dull orange color. Neither of them looked particularly friendly, but neither of them looked like they were about to start fighting with them either.

  “Drake,” the man said, as they came up even with them.

  “Hello, Sydney,” Jess drawled a little. “How are ya?”

  “Very busy as always,” he said. “What can we do for you?” He glanced past her and looked at Dev, then returned his eyes to Jess’s. “We don’t have much in the way of spare parts or supplies to offer.”

  “Just looking for local info,” Jess said. “The bus just got overhauled. We don’t need anything.” She half turned. “This is my new partner, Dev. Dev, this is Sydney Lang. He’s the senior agent here at North.”

  “Like you are in our place?” Dev asked, mildly, not missing the sudden jerk as the North agent focused on her. “How interesting. Nice to meet you.” She extended her hand.

  Warily he took it and pressed it, then released her, returning his attention to Jess. “Did you get promoted? We hadn’t heard.” His eyes shifted to her collar insignia. “Oh, yes, I see you have.” He extended his hand. “Congrats.” He indicated the waiting figure behind him. “Luke Turloute, my chief mechanic. In case you needed anything done to the carrier.”

  Jess nodded at the man, who nodded back, but said nothing. “Shall we get a cup of kack and chat?” She said. “Don’t want to take much of your time. The bus doesn’t need anything, does it, Dev?”

  “Everything is optimal,” Dev said. “We’re fine.”

  “Okay, certainly.” Lang’s manner had changed completely. “Let’s go to my lounge. I’ll ask Dom to join us. He was just assembling the daily recap.”

  He turned and led the way to the inner door. It opened as he approached and Dev felt the familiar tickle of scan across her skin, noting that Jess’s hands were clenching slightly at her sides as she passed through it. The hallway they emerged into was familiar looking, granite walls and the smooth cut floors, though a slightly lighter shade of gray.

  Jess was on edge, it seemed. Her right hand was gently resting on the stock of the big blaster, a casual grip that wasn’t entirely casual.

  “So. When did you get promoted?” Sydney asked. “Really strange we didn’t hear.”

  Jess smiled with no humor evident. “Just recently. I did a long run on the dark side and did a bit of damage. Impressed someone I guess.”

  “Really. Last thing I heard you all were having serious problems there.” Lang lead them into a small lounge and the door shut behind them. He gestured to a drink dispenser then took one himself, and sat down in one of the chairs. “That’s what I heard, anyway. Matter of fact, I heard you almost got skunked.”

  Jess took a drink and handed it to Dev, then took one for herself and sat on a second chair. “We’re always in some kind of trouble, aren’t we?” She asked. “We had some changes up top, and a new class come in. Nothing more than the usual.”

  Sydney’s eyes flicked to Dev, who had seated herself and was merely watching and listening. “I see. So what can I tell you? Nothing new here but more and more storms.”

  Jess nodded. “We noticed. I was just telling Dev here, that it seems they’re coming in every half day. I can’t remember a
single day lately without one.”

  “She doesn’t know about storms?” He looked intently at her.

  “She’s spacer born,” Jess said, casually. “So, no. But what I was really interested in is any word you have of ice pirates. We got intel they’ve been infiltrated by the other side.”

  Dev had to school her face quickly not to react, since certainly that bit of information was as much a surprise to her as it apparently was to Sydney Lang. His eyes opened wide and he put his drink down, straightening up in his chair as he looked at Jess.

  “Ice pirates?” He said. “Are you kidding me? Those people haven’t been seen in these parts in years. They’re all dead, Jess. Where did you get that crazy idea from?”

  Jess leaned back against the back of the chair. “Not according to the intel we got. We only thought they were gone. Two fishermen were found dead frozen in a berg with their gear stripped and a head cut in their chests not two weeks gone.”

  Lang’s jaw dropped.

  The door opened and another man entered, this one in a tech jumpsuit. “Sydney, you called?” The man glanced warily at Jess and Dev, circling them to come up on the other side of Lang. “Hello, Jess,” he said. “Didn’t know you were here.”

  Lang shut his mouth with a click. “Sit down, Dom,” he said. “Jess is looking for intel on ice pirates.”

  Dom chuckled as he sat down. “Want some on Santa Claus too? There are no ice pirates anymore.”

  Dev studied the two of them. The newcomer was tall and very thin, and had brown hair and eyes, where Lang was more heavily built and shorter, with black hair and gray eyes. They were both older than Jess, and she got the impression that Lang was far from pleased about Jess’s promotion.

  Jess seemed to find that funny. Dev made a mental note to ask her why later.

  “Apparently either that’s not true, or someone’s imitating them.” Lang said. “But that’s news to us, isn’t it?”

  Dom snorted. “I’ll say.” He folded his arms and looked at Jess. “Where’d you get that wild tale from?”