Of Sea and Stars (Partners Book 3)

by Melissa Good

  “Hai!” The yell went up suddenly, making her skin prickle in response. Jess raised a fist and heard the stomping boots, as the servers started to come around with pitchers, and she smelled the rich and pungent scent of the dark beer they held.

  Unspoken celebration. Jess let out a breath, seeing Dev’s steady regard of the room, the faint nod of her head as she picked up and understood it with her bio alt’s intense awareness of her surroundings.

  Something was in flight.

  JESS SAT BEHIND her console on the carrier, her comms helmet connected as she waited for the secure link to base to come up. Up front, Dev was busy running scans and reports, sorting out all the information she’d retrieved so far and bundled it for transmit once Jess was done.

  Jess still felt buzzed from the beer. “That was cool, huh, Dev?” She asked, watching the countdown for the comms link.

  “That everyone thought you were amazing? Yes.” Dev glanced over her shoulder. “And I think they are not so upset about me. At least, I hope not.”

  Jess held up a hand as the comms synched, and she felt the scan hit her eyeballs. “Drake, J.,” she muttered into the mic.

  A moment later the small screen came up, and she was looking at Bensen Alters. “Sir.”

  “Evening, Drake.” He was in the small command room off Ops, as secure and private as was possible on base. “How are things there?”

  Jess issued a short, wry chuckle under her breath. “They were right. Something irregular is going on here, but it’s linked into my family, not general ops,” she said. “Stake was attacked by scavengers earlier. We went out and did what we do.”

  Alters nodded. “Any reason?”

  “Yes. They were promised something then double crossed.” Jess kept her voice even. “By my brother, James.”

  The commander’s eyebrows lifted. “Unusual,” he said. “Not at all Drake like.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll let legal know. He was in the mix they were reviewing.” Alters sighed. “We don’t want that kind of result.”

  “I killed him.”

  He folded his hands and studied her. “I see.” His expression lightened a bit. “Hm.”

  “And a hundred twenty some of the scavengers,” Jess said, after a moment of silence. “Dev’s bundling the vid for you, she’ll send it momentarily.”

  He nodded at this. “Good job, Drake. I was just trying to figure out if the stakehold was going to make a claim on it. Have no idea what the legal position on it is since it’s never been an issue before. Guess I’ll send it over to them, too.”

  Jess shrugged. “Haven’t talked to the rest of my family since. I’ll let you know if anything bubbles up.”

  “Good. Well.” Alters cleared his throat. “Something did come in earlier. A request from the science station.”

  Dev’s ears perked up visibly, and she turned in her chair.

  “From Doctor Kurok?” Jess hazarded a guess.

  “Yes. He said he’s finished the initial structure for our tech project. He’d like you and your partner to pay them a visit so he can make sure it’s a fit.” Alters leaned forward. “I let him know you were out on assignment, but I think it’s in our interests if you comply.”

  “Hm.”

  “And since we can’t assign you out,” he reminded her.

  Jess sighed. “Yes, I know. “She glanced up at Dev, who had a very noncommittal expression on her face. “Let me talk to Dev about it, and we can figure it out when we get back.”

  “Good luck at the council tomorrow,” he said. “Try not to kill anyone there. I’m pretty sure that would be a legal problem for us.” He gave her a wry look. “Oh, and by the way, we finally got signal from Elaine.”

  “Everything okay there?”

  “No. But you can’t do anything about it, so it’ll hold. Jason’s working it. Thanks for the report, Drake. Keep your head down.”

  “Yeah, thanks.” Jess cut off the connection and pulled her comms link off, tossing it on her console. “That’s a bucket of fish shit.”

  Dev made a face.

  Jess sighed. “Send the vid. We’ll worry about the station when we get back. Probably have to take the shuttle from there anyway.” She saw the frown get deeper on Dev’s face. “Won’t make you go if you don’t want to, Devvie. I get it.”

  Dev got up and came over to her. “I want to do excellent work for you, Jess.” She crouched down and rested her hand on Jess’s knee for balance. “So if it’s required, of course I’ll go.” She took a breath. “And I would like to see Doctor Dan.”

  Jess gently brushed her fingers through Dev’s hair. “Don’t worry. I won’t let them mess with you. The Doc knows that.” She saw the smile return. “Anyway, we’ve got to finish this mess first. Maybe by the time we get back, they’ll have moved on to something else and not waited for us.”

  The thought seemed to comfort Dev. She stood up and straightened her jacket out. “That’s true.” She moved back over to her station. “Sending now.”

  Jess swiveled in her chair as she heard a knock on the outside of the carrier door. “Who’s outside, Dev?” She glanced up at her screen as the image from the external sensor was driven to it. “Ah. Uncle Max.”

  “Is he going to be incorrect?”

  “Let’s find out.” Jess hit the hatch unlock and let one hand drop to her blaster, just in case.

  Because with Drakes, you just never knew.

  APRIL SETTLED INTO one of the hall chairs, positioning herself to face the opening. “Wish this hallway had a lockable door. There’s just a lot of stuff going on here.”

  “No joke.” Doug had his input pad on his knee and was working with his scanner. “Busier here than at the base.”

  “Well,” April extended her legs out, “they do more stuff. Collecting and fishing and all that. We concentrate on one thing.”

  “Hmm. Some areas won’t return,” he said. “Let me try that phase shifting Dev came up with on it.”

  April smiled and shook her head. “Scary smart. She’s right to be careful about claiming cred—doesn’t want to be a target.”

  Doug had half an ear on the conversation. “Stupid of anyone to make her one. Not with Jess around. Holy crap that guy never even saw it coming.”

  April smiled and stared off into the hallway with unfocused eyes. “I did. I saw her breathing change like it did when she gutted Bain. Didn’t understand it then, but the Doc did. Saw it in his eyes.”

  “She’s pretty freaking ferocious,” Doug said, then grunted a little. “Hey, April, come look at this, will ya?”

  April got up and came over, circled his chair and peered over his shoulder. “What is it?”

  He traced a section of the screen, moving it to his pad and expanding it. “It’s a biological return, but I’ve never seen one like this before.”

  “Biological like in people?”

  Doug shook his head. “No, it’s not rock, not sand or water. It’s some substance that gives carbon and traces back. I thought I saw something a little like it when we were on the other side in that science center.”

  April studied it. “Is that in a cavern? Looks like it’s down around the intake level. Maybe it’s seaweed? They could be growing it there.”

  “No, this is seaweed.” He indicated a second area, smaller and at the rim of the stakehold. “It’s partially exposed to the sea, see? It’s a different profile and the scan recognizes it.” He tuned the scanner a little. “Those phase shifts are creepy good.”

  “But it doesn’t recognize that,” April said. “And that cavern wasn’t on the tour earlier.”

  “New since Jess hung out here, maybe,” Doug said. “Should we go check it out?”

  April leaned on the back of the chair, her eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “Be a good time for it. Everyone’s heading off to bunk time here now.” She straightened up, then paused as she heard the faint scrape of boots against the stone floor. “Someone’s coming.”

  Doug tuned the scanner
. “Rocket,” he said, immediately. “That’s an easy peg.”

  April chuckled. “Yeah, only bio here. Let’s show this thing to her.”

  A moment later Dev arrived, scanner in hand and two backpacks slung over her shoulders. “Hello,” she said. “Jess is conversing with a relative of hers. She’ll be back here shortly.”

  “She’s got nothing but relatives here,” Doug said. “That DNA marker you filtered for is freaking everywhere.”

  “Yes.” Dev opened the door to the chamber she’d been assigned and put the two packs inside, then closed the door and joined them by the heater, undoing the fastenings on her jacket as she sat down. “In my human interface classes, we learned that there are some recombinate mtDNA components that can become pervasive.” She put her scanner down on the table. “Doctor Dan called them—sticky—”

  “You had classes with him?” April asked. “I mean, you had classes where he talked about making you guys?”

  “Of course,” Dev said. “We know what we are. At least some of us, anyway.” A brief smile appeared. “And the advanced sets had classes on why natural borns were different because it helped us interact with them.”

  Doug got up and came over to her. “Can you use your advanced skills to look at this?” He showed her the returns from his scanner. “It’s a cavern down at the lower lev...” He paused as Dev took the scanner from him and peered intensely at it, with a slight, indrawn breath.

  April leaned forward, watching the shifting expression on Dev’s face.

  After a long moment, Doug cleared his throat. “You know what that is?”

  Dev tuned the filters intently. “Yes I do,” she finally said. “That’s vegetation.” She looked up at them. “Plants.”

  “Plants?” April said. “Is that like what they were trying to do over the other side?”

  “I don’t know,” Dev answered honestly. “There is no indication around them of the machinery involved in that instance. But that bio mass is growing plants that this scanning program does not recognize.”

  They were all silent for a moment, digesting the implications of what Dev just said. Then Dev shook her head and manipulated the scanner. “I’m going to sync to my device and see if I can relay it through the base systems.”

  “What will that do?” April asked.

  Dev looked at her. “I have a copy of the dataset from the science station there. I will attempt to match it.” She regarded April. “It would be good if you could communicate with Jess, please. I think she will want to know.”

  “Puh.” April touched her comms link. “Want, yes. Like? Doubt it.”

  THEY WERE OUT on the ledge, looking out over the sea. It had stopped raining and the air carried a rare dryness as Jess regarded her uncle, both of them seated on the cold stone wall.

  “He screwed up,” Uncle Max said. “He never told the council. Never told any of us.”

  Jess shook her head. “Wasn’t living here enough?” she asked. “Having all this? What was he trying to prove?”

  “That he was a better man than your father,” Max said. “He hated Justin. But then, most everyone in the family did.”

  Jess sighed.

  Max chuckled. “He saw through all the bullshit, Jess. He was smart, the way you’re smart, the way your brother wasn’t.” He regarded the sea. “Interforce takes the best and brightest of us, always has.”

  Something clicked about that in Jess’s mind, and she nodded after a pause. “And most of us die young because of it,” she murmured. “Except he didn’t.”

  “He was Drake both sides,” Max said. “He knew something about that the rest of us didn’t. He wanted to pass it. Wanted to have kids. He told me before—well, before they got him—how glad he was that he had.”

  “Well he definitely passed it,” Jess said, in a droll tone.

  “He did,” Max said. “And the Bay as well, unfortunately.”

  “Unfortunately?”

  “You’re active, Jess. When Justin retired, we found out he’d somehow gotten enough shares to his civ profile to claim majority. Big squabble. No one’s really sure how that happened.”

  “Huh.”

  “Even now,” Max said. “Maybe the service? Maybe your grandfather? We don’t know. He was the first in service to retire in a rock’s age. No one knew what to do with him but we figured he’d just code everything into the family pool.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “No. Most of us think he just wanted to be a jackass about it. Justin could be.”

  Jess smiled. “He passed that, too.” She let her head rest against the rock. “Jimmy was convinced I could just hand it all over to him. I just wonder why, if Dad did what he did, that he’d think I would.” She regarded the faint light reflecting off the sea. “Of course, I don’t think it came down like anyone expected.”

  Max shrugged. “Freak chance.”

  “Yeah.” Jess said thoughtfully. She looked up at him. “Family must be boiling. But the stakehold? I got the sense there’s something else there.”

  He took a breath to answer, then went quiet as the comms chirped in her ear.

  “Drake,” she answered, hearing April’s voice on the other end. “What’s up?” She listened to April’s terse report, her own brows creasing. “Okay,” she finally said. “Let me come take a look.” She got up. “Sorry, uncle. Duty calls.”

  He stood and walked with her back inside. “Ship’s leaving tomorrow dawn,” he said. “Anyway, good luck, Jess. Hope it all works out.”

  “Glad you’re leaving?” she hazarded.

  “Always.” He smiled at her. “It’s why I understood Justy the way I did. That being in charge Drake thing’s full up in me. Ship’s a good place for it.” He paused. “Sigurd Rolaffson sends regards, by the by.”

  Jess chuckled dryly. “Bet he does.”

  “Story there, no doubt.”

  THE BIG, HAMMERED metal doors that led off into the family compound were firmly shut as Jess climbed up past them, not even giving them a look as she continued on her way.

  The big hall was mostly dark and empty. She was the only one on the stairs and as she got up to the fourth level she paused and looked down and saw nothing but rock and steel and the steady illumination of the lamps on it below her.

  They were fully inside. There was no reason they needed to keep that diurnal rhythm and yet, just as at the Citadel, they did. Sometimes after the night meal there was entertainment, then all would go off to bed, save the ops watch.

  That, buried deep in the mountainside, kept up around the clock, listening and relaying messages and watching sensors just as they always had. Drake’s Bay control, where a few channels were up to restricted frequencies.

  Jess smiled and headed into the hallway that went to their quarters.

  She sensed the motion before seeing or hearing it, hand pulling the blaster and unsafing it, aiming, fingers tightening between a breath and a second.

  “Hai!” A dark figure blending into the darker walls, hands outflung at shoulder level, palms out. “Friendly!”

  “Friendly but stupid.” Jess tilted her blaster up. “What do you want, Ben?”

  He lowered his hands and looked around. “Got something to tell you before you go out to the regional. Something they should have told you, on two.”

  “C’mon.” Jess holstered her blaster. “Does it have to do with a cave full of veg?” She waved him to join her.

  “You knew?” he said in a shocked tone.

  “No,” she said. “But my team just found it.” She led him to the open area, where April was standing to one side, her long blaster out and aimed. “Relax,” Jess said. “Whatcha got?”

  Everyone looked at Dev, who got up and brought her data pad over. She glanced at Ben, then displayed it to Jess. “This facility here,” she said. “There’s obscuring scan over it. It appears to be a large open cavern that has class one and class two plants growing in it.”

  Jess looked at it, then at Dev. “What kind
of plants?”

  “Consumables,” Dev responded. “I believe several types of beans, beets, and these are peas.” She regarded the readout. “There are also root vegetables.”

  Jess looked at Ben. “That what you wanted to tell me? What is this, Ben?”

  Ben took a step back away from her. “That’s more than I knew,” he said. “Just that something was being done down there, and Jimmy was behind it.” He looked at Dev and the pad. “Is that true? What she’s saying?”

  “She’d know better than I would. I’ve never seen any of this stuff.” Jess regarded the data. “This what they do on station, Dev? Those kind of plants?”

  Dev nodded. “They do. They grow all sorts of things, and I believe it’s exchanged.”

  “For what?”

  “That I don’t know.” Dev said regretfully. “They tested it on us. I’ve eaten most of this.” She looked at her pad. “Except beets.

  I think though a portion of it is given to the natural born on station.”

  “Or sold to anyone with the cred for it,” Jess said, after a moment.

  “But how are they doing it?” April asked. “Some rig? Like the other side?”

  Jess looked at Ben, who shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “They’ve been using that cavern for a workshop since forever, then one week they had all the machinery moved out, and it was put off limits.”

  “They used to do a little rice in there, like at Ten,” Jess said. “Never could grow much, took too much power for the rad for it, and half the time it died anyway.” She handed the pad back to Dev. “Square that away, Dev. Let’s go find out what this is.”

  “It’s protected,” Ben said. “No one was supposed to know about it. I think they even had people in there from somewhere else.”

  Jess stared at him.

  “It was a big deal, Jess. They were talking about this changing everything for the Bay. If that’s all what she said, imagine how much it’d be worth!”

  April leaned against the wall, her blaster cradled in her arms. “Imagine how every single person on the planet would want a piece of it. It’d be different all right. As in, you’d lose every damn thing you had here.”