Partners - Book 1

by Melissa Good

  Jess smiled. “Can’t share the source, sorry,” she said. “But anyway, me and Dev are going out to do a recon over the ice fields. See how true the story is.” She leaned on the arm of her chair. “So I was just wondering if you had any word of them.”

  Sydney focused suddenly on Dev. “Where in space?” He asked.

  Dev studied Jess’s face in her peripheral vision, but she seemed both relaxed and inclined to let her answer her own questions. “Biological Station two,” she answered promptly. “I’ve just been downside a week. I’m still learning all the differences.”

  Dom blinked. “You’re the damned bio alt.”

  Dev nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Biological Alternative set 0202-164812, instance NM-Dev-1. But please call me Dev. It’s short, and it’s what they painted on the carrier.”

  The two North agents stared at her as though she’d grown another head. “Are you kidding me?” Dom looked at Jess. “You really went along with this?”

  “I did.” Jess appeared to be enjoying his consternation. “I had my doubts but Dev’s grown on me.” Her eyes twinkled a little. “She’s a kickass bus driver. Matter of fact, she helped put the damn thing back together after we blew apart Gibraltar a couple days back.”

  Dev produced a mild grin. “It was the least I could do.” She said. “Since I banged it up doing that.”

  “I thought that was just a crazy rumor.” Sydney finally spoke up. “Something I heard on the ops report. She’s really a bio alt?” He stared openly at Dev. “She doesn’t look like one. Not one I’ve ever seen anyway, and most of the sets cycle through here for ice experience.”

  “I’m an experimental set,” Dev said. “Developmental. That’s what the Dev stands for.”

  Both North agents looked very uncomfortable. “Well,” Sydney said. “No telling what comes out of Base Ten.” He twitched a little. “I did see the report on Gibraltar. Bet you made some enemies with that one, Jess.”

  “Bet I did.” Jess got up. “But, if you all have nothing to share, we’ll be on our way. Can I get the latest met?” She looked at Dev, who had also stood and was watching her. “And you said you had a daily recap?”

  Dom got up and went over to a console, sliding behind it and into the chair. “Sure,” he said. “We sent a team to do ice measurement a few weeks ago. Looks like some glaciations building up again. Maybe drop the water table a little. Give you guys at ten back your beach.”

  “That trick at Gibraltar give you your gold bars, Jess?” Sydney asked.

  “That and a few other things,” Jess smoothly replied. “Bain appreciated the effort.”

  “Bain?” Sydney and Dom both looked up at her in surprise. “How’d you get involved with him? I thought he was busy in his fortress of solitude at Pichu,” Sydney said. “Haven’t seen him in these parts in years. Is he at ten? What’s up there?”

  Jess shrugged. “Who can say what he’s up to? He’s the Old Man,” she said. “You’ll have to ask him if you want to know. I’m not gonna speak for him, that’s for damn sure.” She held her hand out for the films Dom had retrieved. “Who knows? Maybe he’ll drop by here next.” She winked at Sydney, who managed a sour smile in return. “Thanks. C’mon, Dev.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Dev said to the two men, then she turned and followed Jess out of the room, and back down the hallway toward the carrier bay. “That was interesting.”

  Jess chuckled. “Yes it was.” She guided Dev back through the scan, and ducked past a team of bio alts who were in exposure suits with the helmets removed, their hair damp with sweat. They were standing around a big block of ice, and Jess paused as she was almost passed them and turned back. “Whatcha got there, boys?”

  The bio alts looked at her warily. “Agent,” one said. “This is an ice sample.” He glanced at Dev. “Tech.”

  Dev cocked her head and studied him. The group of bio alts were older, possibly twice her age, and she wasn’t familiar with the set. Apparently, the bio alts weren’t familiar with her either. “Hello,” she said. “Why were you taking a sample of the ice?”

  “We were told to,” the man said. “Do you require something?” He looked from one to the other. “We are assigned work.”

  “Thanks.” Jess clapped her hand on Dev’s arm. “We were just curious.” She nudged Dev ahead of her and they crossed the carrier deck and wound their way between the landing pads. She lowered her voice. “We can talk after takeoff. Not before.”

  “All right.” Dev led the way onto the pad, surprising a bio alt technician who was examining part of their engine pod. “Is there something irregular?” Dev asked him.

  He jerked, and turned. “Nothing.” He backed away. “Just looking at the new intakes.” He pointed at the front of the engine. “Never saw them before.” He was an engaging looking man, almost Jess’s height with curly red hair and freckles.

  “Decco!” A voice rang out. “What are you doing over there? Get back to work!”

  The bio alt turned and rambled down the steps, ducking past a regenerator and disappeared into the shadows quickly.

  “Hm.” Dev reached out and triggered the hatch, the scan tickling her palm. “That was also interesting, but in a different way.”

  Jess chuckled under her breath. She followed Dev up into the carrier, slapping the door lock and just barely clearing the door before it sealed. She felt better, the moment it had. The itchy spot between her shoulder blades eased, and she felt some of the tension come out of her as she unholstered her guns and put them back in their racks.

  “Those men were not...ah.” Dev sat down in her seat and started up her checks. “They were in some discomfort with us being there.”

  “Oh, yes.” Jess laughed and dropped into her chair. “Sydney hates my guts. He’s at North because of me,” she said. “That’s a long and sordid story I’ll be glad to tell you after we get our asses out of here.” She swung her own console around and fed the films into it. “I loved doing that. Stuck up jacktard.”

  “What’s a jacktard?” Dev got her restraints on. “And what are ice pirates?”

  “Hehehe. They’re an old fisherman’s tale, Dev. There’s no such thing.”

  Dev started up the power systems. “But you said there were.”

  “I lied,” Jess said cheerfully. “But I bet they now send out six teams to find the bastards because they think I know something they don’t.”

  Dev turned all the way around in her chair and peered at her. “Excuse me?”

  Jess got up and came over, crouching down and resting her hands on Dev’s knees. “What I was here for was to find out what they knew, and what they didn’t,” she said, in a suddenly serious voice. “What I found out was, they don’t have an ear inside Base Ten. They didn’t know about Bain, and they didn’t know he offed Bricker. “

  “But they did know about me,” Dev said, resisting the urge to get lost in those close by pretty eyes.

  “They did know about you,” Jess said. “So their latest news is about a week or so back, right? They heard about Gibraltar because everyone on the damn planet’s probably heard about that. We blew up half a mountain. But they didn’t know the inside stuff they would know if they were in contact with anyone inside our base.” She reached up and put her fingertip on Dev’s nose. “And that is interesting.”

  “Hm.” Dev thought about that. “Should they know?”

  “Something as big as Bain showing up? That’s gold plated prime gossip, Dev. The kind of thing the night ops revel in sharing in those little wee hours when it’s just them, and the boards. You know what I mean?”

  “Sort of. I know what gossip is,” Dev said. “We had to be really careful about that. If they caught you telling tales about people, you could get punished.” She watched Jess’s expressive face react, her eyes narrowing and a bit of chill coming into her gaze. “So we used to find sneaky ways to talk about it that no one would figure out.” She smiled. “Some of us, anyway.”

  “The smart ones,” Jess said,
resting her elbows on Dev’s thighs. “Right?”

  Dev hesitated, then she smiled a little wryly. “I think so, yes. There were some of us there that understood more. Like me and Gigi.”

  “Okay, so it’s the same with Interforce,” Jess said. “There are some really smart people around there, and some people not so smart. The not so smart ones we can use for our purposes. The smarter ones, it’s harder.”

  “Must be very hard with you then. You’re very smart.” Dev let her hands drop and rest on Jess’s arms. “That man, the other agent, was angry about you being senior. Why?”

  “Ah.” Jess stood up. “Let’s get on track and then we can talk about that.” She patted Dev’s shoulder and went back to her seat, strapping herself in as she glanced at the console. She scanned the daily report, noting the un-obvious gaps in it and shook her head. “Hope the met data’s worth the plastic it was printed on.”

  Dev settled her comms onto her ears and dialed in the landing channel. “BR270006 to control. Requesting lift.” She got her systems ready as she waited for the response to come back. As the silence went on, she glanced outside, half expecting the men with guns to be back surrounding them.

  But the carrier bay was empty. “BR27006 to control, are you receiving this? We are requesting lift permission and egress,” Dev said, glancing into the reflector and seeing Jess watching her, a quietly alert look on her face.

  “Give me juice,” Jess said.

  “If I activate the weapons systems, they will detect that,” Dev said.

  “I know.”

  Dev ran her hands over the controls, bringing up the power to the engines, and then opening the links to the weapons, lights and readouts coming online as she heard the hum rising on either side of her. She looked out the front screen again peering around to see if anyone was going to react to it.

  After a moment, a crackle in her ear gave her the answer. “BR27006 you are cleared to lift. Outer doors are open.”

  Jess chuckled behind her. “Jerks.”

  “Would you really have shot something?” Dev ignited the landing jets and lifted off the pad.

  “Yes, and they know it,” Jess said. “Anyway. You have the coordinates up there? Let’s get out in the white. With any luck, we’ll run headlong into a storm and have to find a place to hide until it passes.”

  “If we’re lucky?” Dev glanced in the mirror, finding Jess smiling at her. “I see.” She rotated the carrier and moved toward the outer doors at a stately pace. “This should be interesting.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  THE ICE FIELD astounded her. Dev saw the edge of it approaching as she came in low over the waves, feeling the tug of wind against the carrier’s outer shell she had to compensate for. The water seemed very dark here, a deep almost black color under the gray skies that contrasted starkly against where they were heading

  She glanced into the mirror. Jess was slumped in her seat, her eyes closed, and her body relaxed and after a moment, she realized her partner was sleeping. She had her hands resting on her thighs, and her chest was moving with a slow and steady motion.

  Well, that was curious. Dev returned her attention to the screen, though she had the autonav on. She checked the chrono, and saw they still had two hours of flying left and decided to let Jess get some rest since she always seemed to have that just slightly drawn look Dev always associated to the programmers and the people who worked with Doctor Dan who had too much to do and too little time to do it in.

  She focused on the console. The scan had just retrieved some new data and she studied it, noting the meteorological component that seemed to indicate lines of strong thunderheads approaching from the west. That was interesting. She recalled the last couple of days and it seemed to her that storms did tend to approach from the west, and flow east. They’d followed one right into their last mission, in fact.

  Why was that? Dev hadn’t gotten much instruction on downside weather patterns, and she resolved to find some labs about them when they got back. Jess seemed to be concerned about the storms, so she decided to find out what she could about them so she could maybe provide some helpful information.

  She checked the scan, which had come back empty of targets to its terminus. The carrier had far more limited systems than either the station they’d just left, or the citadel they’d come from but still it surprised her to find the scope so empty of anything.

  Ah well. She settled down to fly and monitor, letting the time pass as she studied the information the carrier’s systems had on their destination. After a time, a very soft chime sounded, and she returned her attention to the screen.

  The ice line was approaching, and Dev sat forward a little, looking out at it with great interest as they left the ruffled waters and skimmed over the white surface. It was not as flat as she’d thought from afar. It was full of folds and rises, and as she glanced down between them she saw bits of reflected blue in the hollows, a rich and bold color that surprised her.

  It was pretty. It was also bright and she blinked a bit as her eyes refocused after so many hours of going over the dark sea. It reflected some of the wan, gray light up too, and she shaded the screens as she didn’t want it to wake up Jess.

  A quick glance behind her reassured her it hadn’t. She checked her coordinates and resumed looking out the window, fascinated by the beautiful contrast of white, gray and blue. Far ahead of her, she could see a line of mountains, and she knew their course would take them up near them before they turned and went east.

  She settled her ear cups on and turned on the outside sensors, sending the output to her panel so it wouldn’t hit the inside speakers. At once she could hear wind outside buffeting the carrier, and beyond that, a soft, irregular crackling. It sounded odd and strange, and then a flicker of motion caught her immediate attention and she tracked to it, seeing a moving form cross the ice and disappear behind a big crack.

  She inhaled slightly in surprise, not really sure of what she’d seen. It had been small, and fast, and she hoped the scan had caught it so she could show it to Jess later since she was confident Jess could identify it.

  The wind started pushing against them a little harder. Dev took the throttles into her hands and curled her legs around the mounts of her chair, requesting another scan and looking to her left, seeing the already tightly clouded sky growing darker in that direction.

  Reluctantly, she half turned, then she released the restraints and got up, crossing back into the back of the carrier quietly. “Jess?” She called softly. “Jess?”

  Jess’s eyes remained closed. Dev eased up next to her chair and put a hand on Jess’s shoulder, pressing it lightly. “Jess?”

  For a moment there was no response, then she saw Jess’s body take on tension and her eyes fluttered open to blink at her with some bewilderment. “The weather’s getting worse. I thought you needed to look at it,” Dev said, in an apologetic tone. “Sorry about waking you.”

  Jess raised her hand and rubbed her eyes. “I fell asleep?” She asked, in a disbelieving tone. “Are you kidding me?”

  There didn’t seem to be a reasonable answer to that, so Dev merely went over to the dispenser and retrieved a container, bringing it back over to her. “I think maybe you were tired?” She handed it over. “Nothing occurred of interest.”

  Jess looked bemused. “It’s not that. There’s nothing I like better than a good catnap but I don’t usually do it in the middle of a damn mission.” She opened the container. “Must be the fault of your extra comfy chair here.”

  Dev smiled and went back to her seat, resuming her headset.

  Jess sipped at her drink and studied the pale head just visible over the seat. She could still feel sleep’s hold on her, faint wisps of some formless dream drifting out of her awareness as she took stock of her surroundings. Had she been that tired? She sighed, acknowledging the fact that her body still hadn’t truly recovered yet. “How long was I out?”

  Dev glanced behind her then looked back at the con
sole. “I didn’t notice when you went down,” she said. “But at least two hours.”

  Went down. Jess wrinkled her nose at the statement, not entirely sure it was comfortable. What had been comfortable though, was the fact that she, apparently without much conscious thought about it, had determined that Dev was completely and honestly trustworthy in a way she hadn’t really expected.

  Maybe that had started when she’d unlocked the portal between their quarters. She’d been trained to such an instinctive degree that the sound of the door opening would wake her, as it always had when Josh had done it. She’d never slept in the carrier with him driving.

  Never.

  Now, this bio alt had been her bus driver for what—a week? And here she was going completely out without any care in the world on her second flight with Dev. What the hell was that? Was she that convinced Dev was so totally on her side?

  Really? What was her subconscious saying there? And more importantly, could she trust that? Could she trust her own judgment when she’d been so damn wrong about Josh? Jess studied the reflection she could see in that mirror up front, the pale eyes watching through the window, so intent, and so serious.

  Was she just fooling herself? Or was having her tech be another woman changing the dynamic so much? Less competition? More? Different?

  Dev looked up and their eyes met. Jess felt a sense of warmth spread across her chest and the uncertainty faded before the unambiguous steadfastness she saw in that expression. This was not a Josh. Jess smiled and watched Dev smile back. This was a construct that had been designed and developed to be able to be trusted. That’s what the difference was. With Josh, they only knew what he decided to reveal to them, and the background they were able to check.

  Dev?

  There was nothing they didn’t know about her. Kurok had handed over her programming to them the day they’d gotten there, and she’d already leafed through it. Jess’s shoulders relaxed, and she took a longer sip of the kack. Her falling asleep just proved it. She could think whatever she wanted, but her instincts were bred in and bone deep and if her battered subconscious, which had kept her on a hair trigger since the ambush, allowed her that level of trust then she had little choice but to accept it.