Partners: Book Two, page 44
Didn’t matter. Jess wiggled her toes and let her thoughts slip, savoring the feeling of sleep taking her over, tucked under the covers in her own bed, with her own...
What, really, was Dev? Her partner? Yes. Her lover? Jess smiled briefly. Well yes, apparently so. Her friend? She thought about that word, tasting it cautiously on the back of her tongue. Yes, maybe Dev was that, too. If they both survived, it would be interesting to discover what they ended up being.
Dev belonged to Interforce though. Jess frowned. They’d paid for her, and like all the rest of the bios in the citadel, Dev was property of the corps and had no say in her future.
Maybe they could last long enough for Jess to retire, and then— She remembered, abruptly what her brother had revealed at Drake’s Bay. Jess’s eyes opened and she looked up into the darkness of her quarters. If she retired, and went civ, could she pay off Dev’s contract and bring her to the Bay?
She’d have all the resources of the Bay behind her now, wouldn’t she?
Dev stirred in her sleep and nestled closer, the dim reflection from her collar catching Jess’s eye. If she did buy her contract, could they take that off? Would Dev want to have it off, if it meant no more programming for her?
Hmm. Jess shook her head and firmly closed her eyes. Time enough to think of that once they got out of the mess they were in now. No sense in counting your shrimps before you brought the basket up, right?
Right.
At last, she let sleep take her, resolved to get as much rest as fate would let her.
HANDS GRABBED HER and she twisted, pulling against straps that kept her flat on her back, wrenching her arms to pull them free to fight.
It was dark. It was loud. She could hear screams and explosions. Nearby there was laughter, and then she felt the hot agony as a knife plunged into her and her back arched as she tried to move away from it.
An ankle came free, and she twisted more violently, lifting her knee up and kicking out against the hands holding her down. A body slammed down over her and she let out a deep growl, her eyes flickering shut and then open as the rage built, bringing clean energy to her.
A yell of alarm, and she convulsed, throwing the body off her and breaking a strap holding her wrist. Now she was half free. She slammed her fist into a moving head and grabbed hold with her fingers, feeling one sink into an eye socket. She used the body as a shield to intercept the energy beams she sensed coming at her.
The body fell over and she used the momentum to pull her up against the straps, feeling the strain and then the heavy snap as the leather parted and she was on her feet.
“She’s loose!”
Jess let the rage take her. The pain in her back faded, and she slammed against the nearest body, knocking them back, revealing, for a split second the handle of a blaster that she got her fingers on and yanked from its holster.
“Look out!”
She was caught up in the dream this time, its vivid starkness playing out, but the waves of horror she’d felt before in it wasn’t there. This time she felt her heart pounding, and her skin flushing, but instead of feeling terror, she understood she was the genesis of it.
It was an exhilarating sense of freedom, startling and new and in the foggy way of dreams she knew a moment of wonder as she went with the newness of it, fading back into the action and surging forward.
Hands grabbed her and she spun them off, letting her mind slide down into that space where everything went black and white and she went from captive to hunter, turning and spinning as she pulled the blaster into her body and then unlocked it, recognizing the keys as one of her own.
Josh’s blaster. She brought it up and ducked a thrown arm, swiveling in the other direction as she let out a long blast of energy, cutting through bodies and consoles as people dove in all directions away from her.
Then she saw the doorway open, and fill with armored bodies and she kept on going with the blaster, getting the guards in the face in a swath before she got all the way around and saw Josh.
Just long enough to see his eyes widen before she blew his head apart in a splatter of bone and blood.
No thought, just instinct, her legs propelling her body up into the air as return fire lit the space she’d been in and she twisted and kept firing, the blaster growing hot in her hands.
Stark and clear and raw, she threw herself into the battle and lost all regard for her own safety. She was aware of a rush of energy that sent her back up into the air and into a twisting turn that had blaster fire shooting to every side of her, but somehow missing a hit, and the delicious sensation of tumbling in midair as she returned the shots with pinpoint accuracy.
Then her peripheral vision caught a motion. She turned and aimed as a black sheet of glass slid closed, giving her just one brief glimpse of a profile before it was gone, and the wall sealed with a blue tinted edge as she stared at it, frozen in a moment of time.
A voice whispered in her ear. Jess felt the dream slowly fade, with her in frozen stasis, the shock of realization moderating to a knowledge of her true surroundings as she opened her eyes to find Dev gazing at her in total, absorbed concern.
“Dev.”
Dev looked around, then back at her. “Yes? Are you all right? You were moving around and I thought you were dreaming.”
Jess took a few breaths, as her body came down from the battle high. “I was. I was having that same bad dream but—”
“You weren’t yelling this time.” Dev settled back down next to her. “It didn’t seem dangerous to interrupt you.”
“No.” Jess paused to think. “It wasn’t the same. Ended weird. Or maybe...I don’t know if I...maybe it was me that was different this time. I wasn’t,” she paused briefly. “I wasn’t scared. Something changed.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“I think it’s a good thing,” Jess said. “I think I remembered something. Maybe.”
She checked the chrono and then relaxed again, putting an arm around Dev and letting her eyes drift closed. “We can worry about it in the morning.”
“Okay.”
“Along with everything else. “
THE SOFT CHIME of first watch sounding woke her up. Jess glanced at the chrono in some startlement, then blinked the sleep out of her eyes as she propped herself up in bed.
No dreams this time. Just a long space of delicious oblivion, almost as normal as it once had been to wake up here.
A slight sound nearly made her bound out of it, then she belatedly recognized Dev’s form as Dev entered from her own quarters and came over to the bed, a steaming cup in her hands. “Hello.” She offered Jess the cup. “Would you like some tea?”
“Sure.” Jess pulled her legs up crossed under her and took the cup. “Been up long?”
“About a half hour,” Dev said. “I checked with operations, and things are still nominal, so I thought it would be all right to let you rest a while longer.”
Jess sipped her seaweed tea and observed Dev over the rim of her cup. “You feel better today?”
Dev smiled. “I do,” she said. “Do you?”
Jess considered that. “Yeah. My back’s a little sore still. But okay aside from that.” She stretched her body out a little and realized it was true. “Let me go check in.” She got up and went to the workspace, carrying the tea with her. She sat down and ran her hands through her hair, then started to key up the screens.
“Jess?”
“Huh?” She glanced up to find Dev approaching, a bit of her discarded clothing in one hand. “What’s that for?”
“If you’re going to go on vid comms, you might consider putting a shirt on.” Dev said. “I know if I was on the other end of the transmission it would be very distracting.”
Jess glanced down, then grinned. “Ah, they’re used to my ugly old carcass.” She took the shirt Dev offered her anyway, and put it on, then triggered comms. “Ops?”
Dev went over to the other screen and tapped something into it, reviewing the results intently.
The vid cleared after a moment and Jess was looking at April. “Morning,” she greeted. “How’s life?”
April was in a fresh jumpsuit, and looked alert and rested. “Good morning. Elaine and Brent are off shift. Jason is stable in med, and Mike is getting the bay recommissioned.”
“Thanks.” Jess nodded. “How’s met?”
“Line of storms is building, expected overhead plus four,” April said crisply. “Mike said they got a screen up over the bay, should stand up to the rain.”
“Right.” Jess felt a sense of the inevitable brush over her. “Plus one, in the recon chamber. Let’s put the plan down. Let everyone know.”
“Ack,” April responded immediately. “Plus one.”
Jess closed comms and leaned her elbows on the desk, regarding Dev with a bemused expression. “I guess it’s time to go be in charge, Devvie.” She pushed herself to her feet. “Let’s get ourselves in order and get some grub, and go do what we do.”
“Jess?”
“Hmm?”
Dev came over and touched her side. “You do not have an ugly old carcass. Not if the comp dictionary gave me back the correct reference.”
Jess smiled at her. “Ah, you’re a sweet talker, you are.” She affectionately cupped Dev’s face in her hands. “C’mon, Devvie. I’m a wreck.”
Dev shook her head, her eyes watching Jess’s intently. “You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever known.”
Jess felt the blush, and she blinked a little, finding herself surprisingly tongue-tied. “Um.” She cleared her throat gently. “I don’t think anyone ever said anything like that to me before.”
“Really?” Dev straightened up as Jess tilted her head down and they kissed. “I don’t know why not.” She gave her a hug. “But I’m glad I got to say it.”
Jess smiled, staring across her quarters as she returned the hug, rocking them both back and forth. “Me too.” She finally said. “Meeee too.”
THE OPS STATUS room was familiar and not, patched walls combining with the well-remembered long table shifting Jess’s perceptions as she circled the latter and paused at the head of it, resting her hand on the big chair there before tugging it out and settling into it.
She motioned Dev to the monitoring console up a step on a platform at the back of the room. Dev seated herself and started tapping the tablets when the door opened and the rest of the agents and techs filed in.
Jess was in a fresh jumpsuit, with her insignia on the collar, and given what had happened, she knew that in fact, as well as in theory, she was in charge here. There simply was no one else, and even if there had been she’d have taken it.
Jess started talking once everyone had sat down. “Okay. So we have a marginally functioning base here.”
Brent nodded in agreement. “Marginally. One thing we do have now is power. Batts are all topped up and we charged all the carriers while we were at it.”
“Good,” Jess said. “We’ve got a storm front coming over in three hours. Anyone want to give me odds we’ll get a wave of boom with it?”
“No odds,” Elaine said. She still had the look of recent sleep about her. She’d woken up and insisted on attending the meeting. “Fuckers’ll be back, unless they already have what they came for.”
“The weapons rig?” Tucker asked. “Good luck to ”˜em with it. Hope it fries them like it did the last poor asshole who put it on.”
“Maybe they’ll figure out how to use it. You almost did.” Elaine looked over at Jess. “I heard them talking after you tried it.”
“Not almost, I did.” Jess shrugged “Wasn’t particularly hard. You just want to kill everything in your path and it helps you do it. They were more scared of me in that thing than I was of it.”
The other agents studied her thoughtfully. “So,” Elaine said. “Did they want it and you separately? Did they want to prevent you from using it? Or did they figure to make you an offer you couldn’t refuse?”
Instead of immediately scoffing at the idea, Jess considered it. “Good question. What do you think, Dev?”
Dev looked up from the console. “What do I think?” She repeated the question. “I don’t have enough information to have an opinion.”
“That never stops us, kid,” Elaine said. “Here, opinions are like ass-holes and breasts. Everyone has at least one.”
Dev blinked at her.
Jess chuckled dryly. “If I had to bet, I’d bet they just wanted to fry me for Gibraltar, and they took the rig because they found it accidentally. They sure as hell haven’t made me an offer. They’ve been way too busy trying to shoot me for that.”
Elaine exhaled. “Maybe it would have been better if they had. Maybe you could have brought us with you. This looks pretty dead end to me here, Jess. That would have at the least got us inside there.”
“If they didn’t kill us,” Jess said. “No way they’d trust me no matter what the offer was.”
Mike and April remained quiet, their eyes shifting from one to the other. Their techs were sitting quietly also, in chairs on the far side of the room near where Dev was busy again at her console.
Elaine shrugged. “Still a dead end here.”
“Might be dead end,” Jess said. “Based on this stuff.” She indicated the plas damage reports with a thumb. “We can probably get the outer guns up, and some of the shields, but if they come full at us, that won’t last long.” She pondered the plas. “We’ll get some of them though. I’ll make sure they have some regrets before they tank us.”
“Storm’ll skew that too.” Brent was sitting at the table with them, not with the rest of the techs. He had that faint air of slight discomfort of someone not sure of their place. “Scanners can’t tell the diff between plasma fire and incoming lightning. We could end up firing at clouds.”
“That’s not correct.”
Everyone turned to look at Dev in surprise. Dev swung around and looked back at them.
“The spectrum is different, according to this comp.” Dev pointed at the console. “It’s point four three five out of phase.” Her voice was quiet, but confident. “That is tunable.”
The room went silent for a minute.
“Lemme see.” Brent got up and mounted the step up to the console, pausing behind Dev and peering at the screen.
“Dev rigged her comp to find fish schools at depth,” Jess said. “So she’s probably right.”
Brent glanced over his shoulder. “Didn’t say she wasn’t.”
“Anyway.” Jess returned her attention to the rest of the group. “We’ll operate under the assumption we’ll be attacked when the storm hits. Let’s get whatever defenses we’ve got up, and shunt power to them so we don’t just let them roll over us. Then if they penetrate, and come in again, we’ll draw them to a central point.”
Elaine nodded. “Logical place would be centops.”
“But we would have to leave a trail of broken doors to it through the heart of the citadel,” Jess said. “Likely?” She watched her fellow agent lift a hand and let it drop. “We keep them as close to the perimeter as we can. If they hit the carrier bay focus them into maintenance level six, and if they get into the shuttle bay use security main.”
“That makes sense,” April said. “So the deal is we leave breached entries to both spots?” she said. “And booby-trap ”˜em?”
Jess nodded. “You and Mike take care of that,” she said. “The rest of us will work on the defensive systems, unless Dev’s already done that.” She eyed her partner.
“Not quite yet,” Dev said. Brent was now seated next to her, pouring over the data on the screens and leaning on his elbows as his eyes flicked over the readouts intently. Dev went back to working on the screen, as Mike and April and their partners stood and headed out, leaving Elaine behind at the table.
“So we make a valiant last stand, or hope HQ sends support?” Elaine asked, propping her chin on her fist. “I’m okay with that, by the way. Worse ways to go.”
“Jess,” Dev interrupted gently. “I am getting biologic readings in what is listed as a storage facility.”
Jess got up and came over to see, Elaine circling the table to join them. “What is...oh.” She leaned on the back of the seat Dev was in. “No ident?”
“Scan is not working well in that location,” Dev said. “It’s just showing bio.” She paused. “And it’s not some of us.”
“Us?” Jess eyed her.
“Biological Alternatives,” Dev clarified. “We have these.” She touched her neck, as if reminding Jess. “They do read on scan.”
“Don’t forget you’re more us.” Jess indicated herself and Elaine. “Maybe I can talk to your buddy and see what we can do about that necklace.”
Dev’s eyes went a little rounder, and she tilted her head as she focused intently on Jess. “What?”
“Later.” Jess glanced at Elaine. “Let’s go find out what that target is,” she said. “Dev, you two stay here and get as much working as you can in weapons and defense.”
“Yes,” Dev said. “But Jess, please take care.”
Jess paused and regarded her, a faint smile crossing her face. “I will.” She lifted a hand in a wave and headed out the door, Elaine ambling after her, not without giving Dev a long, considering look.
Dev stood up. “I think the systems in the operations room are more functional,” she said. “Would you like to move back there to work on this task?”
Brent stood. “Sure. Why not?” He led the way down the step and out of the room. “So you and Jess hook up?” he asked her, as they walked along the corridor.
“Yes.” Dev had taken care to look the term up the last time Jess had used it.
“Didn’t think that was reg,” Brent said. “Guess it don’t matter much now, though.”
“Yes, it is not correct for bio alts,” Dev said. “But I was told it was all right because of the job I am assigned to.” She touched the pad on the door to the operations room and it opened obediently for her. “However I think you are correct in saying at this time, it does not seem important to worry about.”
