Partners: Book Two, page 8
“Hey.” He got up cautiously and sat in the other chair. “Maybe I’m jealous.” He watched the tremors in her hands until they started to ease. “I’m not used to them being more than custodials, Jess. You’ve worked with her, I haven’t.”
“Yeah, I know.” She slowly leaned back, feeling exhausted. “If we go out together, you’ll see.” She glanced at him, then got up and went to the sanitary unit, grabbing a cloth and wetting it, then bringing it back over. “Here.”
He wiped his face, studying the blood that stained it. “You always had a truly kick ass punch,” he stated mournfully. “She must be good cause you never hit me for dissing a tech before, no matter where they came from.”
A soft knock came at the inner door, and after a pause it opened and Dev poked her head inside. “Everything correct in here?” she asked. “I heard a noise.”
“You heard your partner breaking my nose,” Jason said. “And I’ll be on my way to med to get a reduction kit and plas.” He got up and reached for the burn gun, but Jess put her hand over it. “Right. See you folks later.” He kept the cloth against his face as he left, and the door slid shut behind him.
Dev crossed the floor with a diffident expression, sliding her book into her thigh pocket. “Are you all right?”
Jess gestured her toward the other chair. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just got ticked off at something he said.” She propped her arm upon the desk. “He just finished giving me this.”
Dev leaned closer to examine the mark. “Oh.” She clasped her hands. “Can I get that one?”
Jess grimaced. “You really want one?” she asked. “It hurts. Really hurts.”
“Yes, I do,” Dev responded at once. “Will you do it? I’d rather if you would.” She reached over and put her hands over Jess’s. “That would make it very special.”
Jess felt her heart rate settle, and her body relaxed as she looked into Dev’s eyes. The anger finally leached out, and with it went the twitching and the urge to hurt something. It had surprised her, that reaction, but now seeing the look of somber affection bathing her, it didn’t surprise her any more.
She was caught. A faint smile appeared on her face. “I’ll do it.” She leaned forward and brushed her lips against Dev’s. “And maybe we’ll get lucky and we’ll get a night at home tonight.”
Dev’s eyes brightened, and she grinned. “I’d like that.”
“Me too.” Jess picked up the burn gun and adjusted it. “Take your suit down, partner. Let’s make you a marked one.”
Dev felt a sense of crazy pride erupt in her. She undid the catches on her jumpsuit and pulled it down to her waist like Jess’s was, straightening in the chair and tucking her boots under it. “Go ahead.”
Jess put a hand on her shoulder and looked her in the eye. “It’s really going to hurt.” She warned her. “A point of pride with us is, you don’t scream.”
“Okay,” Dev said. “I’m ready.”
“I hope I am,” Jess muttered, as she got the gun into position. “Hang on, here we go.”
Dev heard the buzz a brief instant before it touched her arm, and then she blinked, as a searing pain lanced into her skin. It built faster than she’d expected, and she only barely had time to focus past it before her body reacted. She concentrated on her own heartbeat, hearing the hammering in her inner ear as the buzz grew and faded, and then grew again.
It did, as Jess had warned, really hurt. But she’d learned how to deal with that in the creche, in the long hours and days of various tests and trials, and the brief training on what it would be like if they did wrong and had to face discipline. So she thought of other things, of the things she’d shared with Jess, and their missions so far, and the cones, and the shrimps at Quebec and...
The buzz stopped. The pain didn’t, but Jess put her hand on Dev’s knee and she knew it was over. She opened her eyes and looked at her. “Did I do okay?”
Jess’s lips tensed into a smile, one that warmed her eyes as well. “Like you’d been taking them for years,” she said. “Let me get some cream for ya, and for mine too.” She got up and went to the sanitary area, disappearing for a moment.
Dev took that time to look at her arm, which now had two areas of horribly reddened, burned skin visible. The pain was vivid, but it was now a throbbing ache rather than being on fire, and she examined the pattern with a sense of lightheaded fascination.
They started at the tip of her left shoulder, one set with some colored balls and bars, and then the second, with only two colored balls and an empty bar on the bottom. It was fuzzy and indistinct looking, due to the swelling, but she could see when it healed it would look like the brown marks that patterned Jess’s arms.
That made her very happy, happy enough not to mind the pain. She looked up at Jess as she returned, and studied her new marks. “It’s almost the same except for this bit.” She indicated a small area on her skin.
“Uh huh.” Jess carefully smeared some healing cream on herself, then turned her attention to Dev. “That little bit is mine. It means you are.”
Dev felt lightheaded again. “I’m...yours?”
“Yes.” Jess gently treated the burns she’d made on Dev’s arm. “You are my partner, right?”
“Absolutely.”
Jess finished putting a light gauze bandage on her, and handed her a small jar of the cream. “Put it on often. It’ll help it heal,” she said. “Hungry?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go get some chow.” She eased the jumpsuit up over Dev’s shoulders and fastened it. “Know what?”
Dev flexed her hands a little, and gave a small nod. “No, what?”
“Glad you did that.” Jess leaned forward and kissed her again and this time it went on for a while and she felt her breathing shorten as Dev’s hands fit themselves along her ribs making her nape hairs prickle. It felt insanely good and it was very hard not to unfasten her suit and move over to the bed.
So hard. Dev’s breath tickled her collarbone and then their lips met again and she knew she either had to pull back or take it forward and finally the newly scorched skin on her arm tipped the balance. Jess let her head rest against Dev’s and savored the moment, as Dev very gently put her arms around her and gave her a hug.
That made her smile. She exhaled regretfully and stepped back, fastening her own suit and running her fingers through her hair. “I sure hope we won’t be heading out until tomorrow.”
Dev produced a rakish grin. “I hope so too,” she said. “But I think it would be good to hurt a little less first.” She regarded her arm. “You were right.”
Jess ruffled her hair.
Dev shifted her gaze back to Jess. “You were also right about going after Doctor Dan. I’m sorry I gave you discomfort over that.”
Jess rested her arms on her shoulders. “Trust me, Dev. I learned the hard way so you maybe won’t have to.” She grinned briefly. “C’mon. Let’s go to the mess, then you can come back here and help me unpack this stuff of my father’s my brother had sent here.”
Dev regarded the bags and containers tucked against the wall. “Sure.” She followed Jess out the door. “What is it?”
“What was left in the house.” Jess evaded the moving bodies in the busy hallway. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and get to see a picture of me as a kid.”
Dev smiled and put the ache of her arm aside. “Excellent.”
IT WAS LATE. Dev had put the cream on her arm, and was settled back on her relaxation couch in her tank top and short pants, after another shower, and dinner with Jess.
They were expecting some information. No one knew when that would happen for sure, and Jess was in the control place trying to figure it all out. There were two teams investigating, one that had gone north, and one south, and everyone was waiting for them to report.
The techs, herself, and the others, were sent to get some rest, so here she was, very comfortable and relaxed, glad to get some time to just be quiet.
Instead of reading, she had her headset on and she was listening to a comp report, items that had happened while she and Jess were gone. Updates to schedules, maintenance notes, a running inventory of detail she was glad to absorb and digest.
She’d gotten through one report, and halfway through another when the door between her quarters and Jess’s opened and her partner stuck her head in. Dev waved at her and a moment later, Jess was trotting up the steps to join her in her space. She took her headset off and stopped the report. “Hello.”
“Hey.” Jess took a seat on the floor. “They got some real senior guys involved in talking to the other side. Trying to work out a deal.”
“For Doctor Dan?” Dev felt heartened.
“For all of them,” Jess said. “There were six of them who went.”
“I see.”
“So in the meantime we’re just cleaning stuff up. They don’t want me to leave the citadel, don’t want a chance of the other side either grabbing me, or me causing a situation,” Jess said with a brief grin. “So
I guess we get some downtime.”
Dev smiled back.
“They found Sandy,” Jess went on, her face sobering. “Looks like they ran their carrier into an EMF swipe. Nothing much left of it.”
Dev studied her. “They died?”
Jess nodded. “Both of them.” She drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “Carrier was fizzled to nothing. Both of them inside. They’re bringing the bodies back for ident and disposal.”
That took a bit of thinking. “You said flying in that was dangerous.”
“It is,” Jess said. “Sandy knew that. Not sure what happened there.” Which wasn’t exactly true. She suspected Sandy decided to respond to the recall regardless of the danger and pushed it, figuring to get back first and pull whatever prime slot the emergency offered.
She, on the other hand, had stopped to rescue drowning polar bears. What did that really say about both of them?”
“That’s very sad,” Dev eventually said.
Jess grunted softly. “Anyway, wanna come over to my place?” She gave Dev a somewhat rakish grin. “Help me unpack those trunks?” She waggled her eyebrows. “Have a cup of grog?”
“Sure.” Dev removed her headset and swung her legs off her couch. “That sounds excellent.”
They crossed into Jess’s quarters, which were lit with a quiet cool light around her workspace. There were the boxes that had been delivered earlier, and Jess pulled one closer to the chairs, gesturing Dev to take a seat while she diverted her own attention to a pair of mugs and a bottle.
“What are all these things, Jess?” Dev asked, regarding the dull gray cases. “You said they were from your family?”
“Not exactly.” Jess poured out, then handed Dev a cup as she took a seat next to the box. “My mother decided she didn’t want all the reminders of my father around the house. So she had my brother send them here. He figured I’d appreciate them, or something like that.”
“Oh.”
Jess took a sip from her cup then put it down. “So let’s see what we got. I figure most of this is from his office in the house. He used to keep all his souvenirs there.” She touched the panel on the box, which glowed briefly and then retracted, and the top of the case slid open.
A puff of air emerged, full of the smell of paper, and steel. Jess peered inside, and lifted out the first thing in it. She put it on the worktable and went back for a second. “That’s a fishing award he got from the compound we lived at.”
Dev picked it up and looked at it. It was a piece of stone or rock, carved into the shape of a fish, half curved around. “An award?”
“Yeah.” Jess studied a worn blaster, side mount and very old, covered in rakes and scars. “Every year they had a competition who could free-dive and catch the most. He won that time. I remember it, sorta.
Dev put the item down. “Is that like the fisher people on the boat?”
“No.” Jess put the blaster down and dug for something else. “That’s with nets and mech and stuff. For this, you just dive into the sea and catch the fish with your hands.”
Dev’s eyes opened very wide. “Really?”
“Yeah.” Jess opened a folio, stiff and aged. “He was good at that. Could stay down forever.” She leafed through a few pages of notes, handwritten, and almost illegible. Just common stuff, things they had to do around the house, stuff he had to pay off. “Ah.” She opened the other side and saw color and images. “Here ya go.”
She handed one of them over to Dev. “That’s me, on leave, around fifteen I guess.”
“Ah!” Dev examined the image. It was Jess, but a slighter version of her in a gray jumpsuit like the ones the new people had arrived in. She had close cropped hair and a grudging smile in the picture, outside a structure. “You appear attractive.”
Jess chuckled. “I look like a goon.” She was sorting through the pictures. “Here, I was four in this one. You’d never know it was me.”
Dev looked at the square, seeing a child with wild, curly dark hair dressed in a brief outfit that appeared wet. “What is that you have in your hand?”
“Conch shell,” Jess said absently. She opened a folder tucked away in a back pocket of the case, finding a couple of very old plas images inside. “Here’s one of my father at field school grad.” She found herself smiling a little at the tall figure, standing with his hands clasped behind him with three other classmates.
Dev craned her head around to see it. “Oh,” she said. “You look like him.” The man in the picture had Jess’s height and her dark hair, and their faces were shaped alike. “You smile the same.”
“I do.” Jess acknowledged. “He had gray eyes though, not these funny blue marbles.” She put the picture down and went on to the next one.
Citadel, this one. “Must have been the intaking here,” she mused. “Looks so different. That was before they rigged up that deck on top.”
Her eyes tracked to the next picture in the stack, her eyes fastening first on her father’s tall, relaxed form leaning against an old style carrier, and then drifting up to look at the second person in the picture.
She blinked.
She blinked again, a chill running down her back as she studied the shorter man, who was standing with arms folded. He was dressed in a techs dark green, blacked piped jumpsuit with her father’s elbow resting casually on his shoulder.
Slowly, she turned the plas over, searching the back intently and finding a small, scrawled, handwritten note on it.
Me and DJ, too young to know better.
“Oh.” She exhaled.
“Jess?”
Jess looked up, to find Dev watching her, brows knit a little. “Yeah?”
“Are you in discomfort?”
“Am I in discomfort,” Jess repeated. She turned the plas back over and looked at it, then, with a little sigh, put it down on the table between them. “No. But I just figured out why your friend Doctor Dan reminded me of someone I thought I knew.”
Dev gave her a puzzled look, then glanced down at the image and her eyebrows hiked almost to her hairline. Next to the man she now recognized as Jess’s father was a much younger, but definitely recognizable, Doctor Dan himself. “Wow!” she blurted. “It’s him!”
“It’s him,” Jess said in a quiet voice. “Must have been the first or second year after my dad came out of field.” She touched the plas. “He was a tech, like you are,” she added. “I knew he was one of us, but I didn’t...” She fell silent. “Why the hell didn’t Bain say something?”
“It was a long time ago.” Dev was staring in fascination at the image. In it, Doctor Dan didn’t look any older than she herself was, but she could see the look that was so familiar to her on his face, that half smile. She could almost see the twinkle in his eyes.
“Explains why you’re so damn good at what you do,” Jess said. “It wasn’t some random programming. He knew what to give you because his gut knew it.”
Yes, of course. Dev suddenly felt a mixture of emotion, relief and gratitude chief among them. “He was confident I could do this.”
Jess studied her profile. “This wasn’t a last minute project I bet.” she said. “He had this in mind.”
Dev nodded slightly. “Maybe,” she said in a quiet voice. “I hope they get him back. I’d like to ask him.”
“Yeah, me too.” Jess sat back, still a little stunned. Not that Kurok had turned out to be Interforce, she’d known that for a while. But she hadn’t expected him to come in that close.
Her father’s partner.
His first partner, not the one who’d been with him when he retired. Jess remembered Janie. She’d retired two years after Jess became an agent, and she’d never liked the woman. Kurok had been his first, the one he rarely spoke of, but when he had, he’d always smiled.
DJ, he’d called him she now remembered, the very few times he’d called him anything at all.
She looked back at the plas. “Let’s see what other surprises I can find in here.” She went back to the images, but her mind lingered on the previous one, questions starting to surface she wasn’t sure she really wanted to ask.
JESS LEANED BACK in her chair, finally finished sorting. On her workspace, she had the folder full of pictures, the blaster, a small hide pouch of old style coins, and a crypto locked recorder awaiting her attention.
It had been a somewhat weird, slightly uncomfortable ramble through her father’s past. Aside from the surprise of the pictures, she’d found things he’d brought back from the field from sketches on pieces of slate to a heavy knit pullover she knew had come from the other side that even now held a faded bloodstain in the fabric of it.
Now there was the recording. Jess picked up the small device and touched it to her hand, feeling the faint twitch as it accessed the chips embedded under her skin, and with a tiny click an interface appeared.
Amiably, Jess attached it to her comp and waited as it spooled. It was keyed to her, but it could be anything from his recipes for fish to field notes. After a minute or two, the screen flickered on and presented her with a page full of text.
