Partners - Book 1

by Melissa Good

  “How did you get it to penetrate the water?” Jess took the device from her. “I’ve never seen it do that. Usually we just get refraction waves back.”

  “Oh.” Dev cleared her throat. “Well, I was going over the comp from our last mission and I was looking at the intel stream from when we were heading directly at the ocean and—”

  “Those are fish.” Jess grabbed her arm and started across the deck. “C’mon. We can maybe make some major points with this.” She cradled the scanner in one hand and shouldered the door to the interior open. “G’wan with your story.”

  Her story? “Oh.” Dev hurried to catch up. “Anyway, I thought it would be a good idea next time to be able to see where we were going if we were heading for the ocean so I ran the comp through a backscatter decoder and figured out the sine wave differences.”

  Jess stopped, and looked at her. “This isn’t something you were programmed for is it?”

  Dev shook her head. “No. That’s the genetic part. Doctor Dan told me he equipped me to be able to figure things out by myself. So I made a routine to bend the scan waves to match the ones in the water so we could see under it.”

  Jess simply stared at her in silence.

  “Was it incorrect?” Dev asked, hesitantly, after a long moment.

  “You scare the shit out of me sometimes,” Jess said, mildly. “No it’s not incorrect. C’mon.” She started moving again, hauling up as she almost plowed into Sigurd. “Ah. Just the man I was looking for.”

  “For what?” He said. “I’m busy.”

  “Want fish?” Jess showed him the display. “Just off your port bow if you slow down long enough to catch em.”

  Sigurd grabbed the scanner and stared at it. “That’s two hundred fathoms down. How in the hell are you seeing them? Nothing we have goes more than fifty anymore and all it can tell is rough relief not identify damn species.” He grabbed his comm. “Hold hold hold! Engines full stop get ready to deploy the deep nets! Move it! Move it!”

  He tossed the scanner back to them and turned. “We’ll see if you’re not bullshitting. If you are I hope you like swimming.” He slammed back through the inner door and then they felt the radical motion as the ship went from full speed to nothing, and they were thrown roughly against the inner wall.

  They heard bells ringing outside, and a thunder and crash of heavy machinery.

  “Sure hope that scans right,” Jess said. “I do like swimming but not in those waters.”

  Dev recovered her scanner and adjusted it. The readings came back with the same results and she was relatively sure they were accurate. “Can we go watch them?”

  “Sure.” Jess moved gingerly through the hall, glad it was narrow since the motion of the vessel was now extreme since they’d stopped their forward motion. She stepped over the threshold of the hatch into the next section, keeping her head down to avoid slamming it into the overhead.

  Dev followed closely, slinging the scanner around her neck so she had her hands free to keep her balance.

  She stepped over a last divider then followed Jess up a tunnel that brought a blast of fresh, cold air to push back the smell of oil and steel. A moment later and they were outside, on the back part of the ship. Jess pulled her to one side and back against the bulkhead, and they both stood there trying to make sense of what was going on.

  The crew on deck were all in motion, dragging bins over to a huge wheel in the center of the deck that was wound around with netting. As they watched, a heavy hatch at the rear of the deck was lowered, and the roiling sea boiled past it and flooded everything.

  “Holy crap.” Jess grabbed her and hauled her up onto a crate in a smooth motion, just as the backwash from the water thundered against the bulkhead wall, splashing and spraying everything in it’s path.

  “Go go go!” A man nearby yelled. He was standing on a rotating platform, his legs braced and his hands moving rapidly over a set of controls. “Nets going out!”

  The noise was incredible. Dev resisted the urge to cover her ears and watched as the wheel started to turn. As it did, she felt the ship start to move forward, and at the same time, felt Jess’s arms close around her to keep her in place.

  It seemed to take a long time as they went around in a broad circle but then the loudest of the noise stopped and the boat rocked as they unhitched the end of the net and it went free into the water.

  Then it was quiet, save the rumble of the engines and the sounds of the crew securing things on deck. The bell stopped ringing and some of the men started dragging the bins back to the overhang next to the bulkhead, shaking their heads.

  The back hatch closed, and the water drained out and they climbed down off the crate and went back to the deck. The crew looked at them, then looked away, ignoring them as they went about their tasks.

  Jess led the way cautiously into the open. The back deck of the ship had a low wall on the sides, then the higher gate in the back and the steel deck in between was weathered and beaten and had patch upon patch upon patch welded into it. On either side were huge cranes with grapples on them and in front of the wheel was a huge hatch with doors the crew was fastening the grapples onto.

  “Least this’ll be fast.” One of the men was saying. “No idea what cap’ns doing. Ain’t never been no fish here.”

  “Miss out on our spot near the front.” His companion griped. “Crazy ass.”

  The clouds roiled overhead, and the wind shifted. The men looked up at the sky. “Now what?” The first one said. “Let’s go check met. That didn’t feel right.”

  The ship swung around again, making a big circle around the bobbing floats that were tied to the net. “See if they got ‘em.” Jess nudged Dev. “Before this damn storm screws us up again.” She braced her hands on two of the deck supports, blocking the wind and the motion from sending Dev flying.

  Dev appreciated that. She was now between a bulkhead and Jess, and she could use both hands to study the scanner, tuning it carefully and starting her program running. For a moment, it just blinked placidly, then the display shivered into a view of what was beneath them, giving a wiremap of the topography and showing a huge white mass just about right under them. Not knowing really what it meant, she showed it to Jess.

  Jess chuckled. “If they don’t catch ‘em they can’t blame us.” She eased out from under the overhang and looked up. The clouds were getting darker and as she watched, rain started coming down, slapping her with cold, wet drops. She ducked back under cover and tugged her hood up as the wind increased, bringing its chill with it. “Brr.”

  The man on the platform was watching a gauge, ignoring the rain as it dripped off his oversuit. It was made of some repelling fabric since the water beaded and dropped off it, but his face was exposed and he frequently blinked to shed the rain from his eyelashes.

  Pale blonde, like hers. Dev noted. The man was around the same age as Sigurd, she guessed, but he had close cropped facial hair and she wondered if it was because he had to stand outside on the platform all day.

  Then the bell started ringing again, and the deck erupted into chaos, men bolting from the forward structure and heading for the big wheel, and the man on the platform working his controls to open the hatch doors.

  “What are they doing?” Dev asked.

  “Pulling the net in,” Jess said. “I think. Got to be honest and tell you I don’t remember much from the last time except how cold it was, and how good fresh oysters tasted on the way in.”

  Dev smiled, moving over just a little and leaning against Jess’s tall body. She was holding on to a pole, but a moment later, her free arm draped over Dev’s shoulders and there, in that rough and rolling sea in the rain Dev felt a sense of comfort she’d hardly expected. “What are oysters?”

  “Shellfish. You get them in the shallows, then you just open them and eat them whole in a swallow.”

  Dev went still. “While they’re still alive?” She asked, her voice rising in surprise.

  “Yeah. I guess,” Jes
s said, after a brief pause. “They don’t make noise or move around or anything.”

  Dev looked up at her with a very dubious expression.

  Jess laughed. “I think I finally found something that freaks you out in a bad way.”

  Dev was momentarily quiet. Then she produced a pained grin. “I think you’re right. I sure liked the idea of that whole sex thing better,” she said in a mournful tone. “I don’t think I’d like consuming live animals.”

  They both turned when loud noise sounded, and got back under cover as the ship churned to a halt again and four men on the back wall started throwing metal hooks into the water, pulling them back at high speed and sending tails of wet rope skittering over the deck.

  “Go go go!”

  The wheel increased its speed, and the net started coming back onboard the ship, as several more men gathered on either side of the opening with huge, long hooked poles.

  A blast of water washed over the deck and picked a man up, throwing him up the flat surface toward the overhang.

  “Should we help him?” Dev asked, watching the tumbling body with some concern.

  Jess considered in silence, then made a motion that was half shrug and half shake. “Wait here.” She jumped down off the crate and bolted across the floor, leaping over the next rolling wave and two bags it brought with it, keeping her balance across the pitching deck seemingly with ease.

  She reached the injured crewman and grabbed his arm and his upper leg, hauling him up and onto her shoulders and then bracing her legs as the next wave sought to take them from under her. She waited for the water to roll back then she loped across the deck over to where a platform was bolted on the outside of the deck structure, gently letting the crewman down onto his back on top of it.

  The man on the platform turned to watch her, his expression interested. Then he turned back around as the rest of the crew started yelling, and the boat suddenly changed its angle, going down at the aft as the wheel struggled to bring the net onboard. “Whoa!”

  A woman came around the corner of the hatch, hopping over bins and hanks of rope as she skidded to a halt at Jess’s side. “Svein! What happened to him?” She gave Jess a suspicious look. “What did you do to him?”

  “She didn’t do anything.” Dev had slid across the deck to join Jess. “Jess just got him from the water and brought him here.”

  Jess eyed her, a faint smile crossing her face. “Don’t worry,” she said to the woman. “If I wanted to kill him I would have just done it. I don’t waste time beating people up.” She got up. “You a medic?”

  “Yes,” the woman said stiffly. “Sorry. No offense.”

  “None taken. C’mon Dev let’s—”

  They both grabbed for something as the ship pitched upward violently, and high keening sound broke through all the rumbling of the engines. Jess slid against the bulkhead and grabbed hold of a steel strut, reaching out to grab Dev as she bounced over next to her. “What in the hell?”

  The raucous yells of the crew rang out and they ducked their heads around the over hang to see the net being hauled back in, stuffed with brilliant wriggling forms. The draw was so immense it was nearly taking the aft of the ship underwater, and the excitement on deck was palpable.

  The deck door opened and Sigurd hopped out, a grin on his face. “C’mon you slugs! Get that damn thing unloaded before it drags us under! Bet we fill the tanks with one damn throw!” He reached out and slapped Jess on the arm. “Lucky little bastard you are, Drake. Haven’t seen a haul like this in ten years.”

  “Captain.” Jess’s voice cut through all the excitement, and brought him around to face her. She was standing very still, her head cocked a little forward. “Don’t hit me again.”

  Sigurd looked her in the eye in silence for a moment. Then he lifted a hand up, palm outward. “Just treating you like one of the family, Drake. No offense intended,” he said, in a quiet, serious tone. “You did me a favor, you and your tech. We appreciate it.”

  Jess relaxed. “Sorry,” she said. “Been in the field a while.”

  He nodded. “Better warn your tech not to stick so close then.” He winked at Dev. “She’d look lousy with bruises.” He turned and started across the deck, heading toward the cluster of crew now working feverishly to get the fish out of the net and into the tank before the drag pulled the back of the ship under water.

  Jess exhaled, then she turned to regard Dev, who was tucked against her with a puzzled expression on her face. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You’re safe. I only whack people I don’t like or don’t know.” She paused. “Or those who double cross me and nearly get me killed.”

  Dev pondered that. “I’m really glad you like me then,” she finally said. “And I’m glad you helped that man.” She blinked against the wind driven rain. “Should we get out of the weather? I’m really getting cold.”

  Jess relaxed completely, and smiled. “You bet.” She undogged the hatch and pushed it open. “We’ve done our good deeds for the day. Let’s get something hot and check our intel so far before we get washed overboard.”

  “That sure was a lot of fish,” Dev said, as she stepped over the threshold.

  “Sure was.”

  Dev paused, as they opened the inner door. “They don’t eat them alive, do they, Jess?”

  Jess chuckled.

  “Do they?”

  AS IT TURNED out, they didn’t. Dev sat quietly on a low bench against the wall of the common room, cradling a mug of pungent seaweed tea between her hands as she watched the crew stream in and out as they finished their tasks, or started new ones, their high good humor very evident.

  The net had hauled in a good catch, and after they cast it out again, they had been happy with the result and ended up with enough to fill up one of the tanks and now they were powering along in the waves heading somewhere else.

  It was damp and cool in the common room but still a lot warmer than outside. On one side three women were working on preparing some food for everyone. Unlike in the crèche, or even in the citadel, they were doing this in the open, cutting up some things and putting them in a big container that seemed to be over a heat source.

  Whatever it was they were doing smelled good. Dev was just glad there was heat involved, which meant she wasn’t going to have to consume something either raw or alive, the thought of which was giving her quite a bit of discomfort.

  Across the room Jess was talking to Sigurd, and everyone seemed to be ignoring the motion of the ship, even when the front of it seemed to be smashing into the water every few moments.

  The bench she was on had a padded rail behind it, which you could hook an arm around to stay in place, and that was exactly what she had done, wedging herself into a corner to ride out the waves.

  She was pleased her scan had resulted in success. It seemed to have broken the ice with the crew, as Jess had hoped it would, and now, though not really friendly to them, she didn’t see people glaring at them anymore. That was good. She watched Jess, seeing her reach out to casually grasp a hold bar against the wall as the ship pitched hard to the right.

  Then Jess turned her head and their eyes met. Dev found herself smiling for no apparent reason at that, watching a responding smile appear on her partner’s face. It was nice to see that, in this cold and strange place. Dev regarded her cup, then looked back up to see Jess lifting a hand briefly to Sigurd and then head her way.

  She had good balance, Dev noted. The motion of the ship didn’t knock her offstride, and she ended up next to Dev and dropped down onto the bench without missing a step.

  “Hey.”

  “Yes?”

  “He wants you to use the scanner again.” Jess lowered her voice, though the sound in the common room with all the engines going blocked out most listening ears anyway. “I told him we can’t run around catching fish for him.”

  Dev considered that. “Of course I can do that,” she said. “But wouldn’t it be better if I looked at their gear, to see if I could get it to
do the same thing?”

  Jess glanced around quickly. “Can you do that?”

  “I don’t know. I would need to look at their equipment.”

  Jess leaned on the back rail. “Interesting bargaining chip,” she said. “Keep quiet about that.”

  “Okay.”

  “We give that to them, they get a big advantage over the rest of the fleet,” Jess said. “We’re not supposed to tip their balance.”

  “I see.”

  “On the other hand, they’d really owe us one. But I’d wait until we’re in more sheltered waters. I don’t want you banging your head on their crap trying to rig it.”

  Dev didn’t really have much to say to that, so she remained quiet, sipping at her tea. The brew was strange and unlike anything she’d tasted before. The seaweed it was made from stronger and a soft purple color rather than the green she’d been used to.

  Jess peered in the cup. “Sea grape tea. Haven’t seen that in a while.”

  Silently, Dev offered her the cup. Jess took it and sipped from it, rolling the liquid around in her mouth a little before she swallowed it. “Not bad.” She handed Dev’s cup back. They’re making a stew back there. Should be pretty good.”

  “And it’s not alive,” Dev said softly.

  “We made good progress.” Jess lowered her voice again. “Now I’ve got to convince Sigurd to take this haul and sell it to the other side so I can get this mission moving before we get interrupted by pirates.”

  “Aren’t we supposed to be trying to find the pirates?”

  “No. I just want them to think we are,” Jess said. “I mean...” She glanced around. “Hell, if we bump into the damn pirates I’ll be glad to get in a fistfight with them, but we have to focus on the plan, Dev. I need to get that data. That’s the goal. Don’t lose sight of it.”

  “I won’t,” Dev said. “I’m just trying to keep everything straight in my head. What can I do to help?”

  The ship rolled at that moment, sending Jess practically into Dev’s lap. “Holy shit.” Jess hauled herself upright. “Sorry about that, partner.”