Of Sea and Stars (Partners Book 3)

by Melissa Good

  Like swimming with sharks, he’d told Justin later, and Justin had laughed and laughed.

  If he’d seen this room now, Justin wouldn’t have been laughing. The betrayal of his birth home would have put him so deep in the zone, Kurok didn’t think any of those stop words would have pulled him out of it.

  They moved through the mess, going between the tables and stepping over bodies in the dim light. “Them mostly,” Dustin commented. “We kicked ass.”

  Security uniforms, largely. Kurok pondered that as they got to the front of the room and the big folding old school doors that were actual wood and smelled of antiquity and dust. “Hold up,” he said and pressed the side of his head against the warm neutral surface.

  “C’mon.” One of the kids pushed gently against the door.

  It yanked back without warning, and in the next breath, blasters and heavy duty weapons were raised and pointed.

  Kurok spread his arms out. “Get back!”

  “Kill them!” The shout came from those dark clad figures, stripped of reason and desperate as they faced off against the Bay kids, who bristled instantly, full of hormones and inbred instinct and responded in kind.

  The rage around Kurok built, and as fingers tightened on triggers he managed to shove his way forward and raise both hands. “STOP!” he bellowed at the top of his voice. “STAND DOWN!”

  For just an instant there was an afterflash. He almost saw them fire, almost felt the wash of rage as the youngsters next to him moved in response. Yet when the echo of his voice faded, incredibly, they listened.

  No one fired.

  “Who the hell are you?” a man in an Interforce uniform asked. “What are those kids?” He lifted the muzzle of his blaster up. “I don’t care. Even the damn babies in this place are screwball, so you better get out of our way buddy. We’re getting out of here.

  Kurok took a step forward. “My name is DJ Kurok,” he said in a calm tone. “Senior field tech, retired.” He half turned. “And yes, these are some juvenile members of Drake’s Bay homestead.” He paused. “Along with several sets of biological alternatives under my direction.”

  He was aware of the vibrating tension in the young bodies next to him, their eyes focused on the security force, fingers curled around pikes and poles they’d picked up on the way in.

  The Interforce agent studied him intently. “Peter, contact centops again. See if they’re answering,” he said to a shorter man in green next to him. “If not you’re all just going to get out of our way.”

  “Sure,” Kurok said. “You’re welcome to leave. But if you go out that way, you’ll just end up in the outer passageways.”

  “No answer, John,” the tech said. “I don’t hear anything on any channel.”

  Kurok took another step forward. “We heard some explosions. I don’t know if anyone’s left that way.” He indicated the central hall. “May not be anyone left to answer.”

  The agent was young. Kurok saw him lick his lips, and suddenly he felt sad for all of them. “You’re from Tempe? Or Juneau?” he asked. “I was stationed Base Ten, back in the day.”

  They looked shell shocked, on the edge. Unsure of how to move forward, afraid of retreating. Holding tight to a twisted normality. But he could see some of them listening to him, blinking, soothed by the familiar words.

  “John, I’m not getting any returns,” the tech said. “We should go see what happened.” He glanced at Kurok. “Or get out of here. Anything but just stand around.”

  There were twenty of them. Ten agents and ten techs. Kurok didn’t know any of them. They were all young, probably just graduated from field school, new recruits after the last disaster.

  “We’re from Juneau,” the agent finally said. “They sent us to help.”

  Kurok sighed. “My advice to you is to just go into the mess there and sit down, or come with us to see what happened. Put the guns down. Don’t try to damage these young people because they just came back from Bio Station Two in space. It’s been a long day for them, too.”

  Dustin straightened up next to him in visible pride. The rest of the kids joined him, bearing their wounds and scars proudly.

  The agent licked his lips again. “They brought Drake back,” he said. “With the shuttle.”

  “Bet your ass we did,” Dustin said. “My cuz.” He pointed his thumb at his own chest. “My pop was her pop’s bro. I’m Drake, and this place is Drake, and you ain’t got no damn right to be here.” He rocked forward a little. “No right to snuff out them olders, no right to be taking nothing from here.”

  Kurok watched the agents carefully. “He’s right,” he said in a gentle tone. “For the entire history of Interforce, the backbone of everything it is, came from here. This place has bled more for it than any other place on earth.”

  The agent hesitated, clearly on the edge, clearly poised on the brink of that slide into the zone. Then the agent’s body posture changed. His shoulders relaxed. Hand slid off the blaster. “Yeah. How do we get out of here?” he asked. “We left our carriers on the next ridge.”

  “C’mon.” Kurok waved him forward. “You’ll need to get up to the upper levels to get out that way. Follow me.”

  And they did. This odd assortment of Bay rats, Interforce ops, and stolidly following bio alts.

  NIGHT HAD FALLEN, and now the flashes of lightning were almost continuous, lighting the central hall in gold washed silver as power came back and what was left to return did also.

  Jess sat on a box, her hands resting on her knees, allowing Dev to clean some of the blood off the side of her head as Mike read off statistics from a plas clipboard.

  Old as the hills. Older than she was. A sheet of beaten and gouged material that had been used by men in Mike’s position for as long as Drake’s Bay had existed.

  “Still findin’ bodies,” Mike said. “Told everyone to just drag everything to the processor and start pumping. Gotta get them out of the halls.”

  “Yeah,” Jess agreed.

  She wasn’t really sure if it mattered. Interforce would come back at them with everything they had soon as the storm ended.

  She paused and thought. Wouldn’t they? “Any word from the shuttle?” she asked Dev.

  “No. I can’t raise them.” Dev finished cleaning the deep cut under Jess’s ear and gently wiped off the lump on the side of her head. “That looks very sub-optimal.”

  “Feels like that,” Jess agreed. “We lost a thousand people here, Dev.” She shook her head very faintly. “For what?”

  Mike was scribbling on the plas, and he answered. “For the Bay, our side. Been building to it, Jess. Everyone’s trying to make this place like all the other homesteads. Blood can’t handle it.” He looked up at her. “Pretending we’re not different.”

  “Yeah,” Jess said after a pause. “We are different.”

  “We,” he repeated.

  “We,” Jess echoed. “Me more than many. They only take the most different. Make us Interforce. Let us kill as much as we want. Rest of you are stuck here wanting to beat kittens to death, and you have to just scrape limpets. Sad.” She blinked a few times. “Not enough people left to breed it out of us.”

  “They tried.” Mike folded his broad arms over his chest and the clipboard. “Got them babies off anyone they could.”

  “Never worked. Doc saw it upside. What did they call it, Dev? Sticky?” Jess sighed. “Flipped a bit. We all got it. Just mattered what degree.”

  Mike nodded. “You got it.” He studied the board. “That’s why the first ones down were the elders. They wanted to bleed for the Bay. I saw old Uncle get it. He took out one of them with a kitchen knife in that one good hand.” He smiled a little. “Bastard was laughing his head off.”

  Old Uncle. Jess remembered seeing him at that dysfunctional lunch on the occasion of her mother’s processing. “Good on ya, Jessie,” he’d said on hearing of her slaughter of the other side. Good on ya.

  “Yeah I can picture it,” Jess said. “He had a right
to it. They skunked him.”

  “They did,” Mike agreed. “He took it back from ’em.”

  “Jess?” Dev was there, holding something out. “Would you like some hot tea?”

  Jess took the cup and held it, feeling it warm the palms of her hands. “Didja get some yourself, Devvie? You must be whacked.” She looked at her partner, who did in fact look exhausted.

  “Yes, I did, and also this.” She handed over a fishroll.

  Jess shifted her cup to one hand and took the roll with her other. “Glad everyone stopped shooting for now.” She took a sip of the tea, hot and pungent. “Better than the stuff up on the station.”

  “It is.” Dev sat down next to her and took a sip from her own cup. “I’m glad we’re back here.”

  “We’re going to get toasted, Dev. There’re not gonna let me survive this,” Jess said, in a tired tone. “Either Interforce’ll eliminate me or the family council will. I did this.” Jess gestured to the battered hall with her cup. “My fuck up. “

  Mike stood there, listening. “Nope. You just did a sitch. Jimmy did this and that crackerhead director.” He leaned against one of the crates that had been dragged into the central hall. “Sides, nothing left of the family, Jess. You’re it.”

  “Jake’s in the shuttle with Tayler,” Jess said after a long pause.

  Mike snorted. “One’s worthless, the other’s taken. Like I said, you’re it.”

  “I’m taken.”

  Mike shook his head. “You’re old enough to have sense. Like Justin was.” He looked up as a buzz of voices suddenly rose. “Now what?”

  Arms rose, bodies straightened and turned and came to order as the far hall filled with figures, some black and green clad. But at their head was a short, scruffy form in a Bay jacket. He lifted both hands and let out a sharp whistle.

  Dev stood up. “Doctor Dan.”

  “Doctor Dan.” Jess had to smile, seeing him as he herded a handful of Interforce along with his battle group of Bay rats and bio alts. “Relax, Mike. He’s a friend.” She managed to get to her feet and lifted one hand to catch his attention.

  “He’s not with friends,” Mike said. “Where the hell did those bios come from?”

  “Space,” Dev said. “They came from the space station. They helped us get away from there.”

  Mike looked at her. “Don’t much care for you all.”

  Jess swung her head around to stare at him.

  “Give me the stink eye all you want, Drake,” Mike said. “I’m gonna say it. I don’t like the jelly bag brains. We don’t here. Never have.” He studied her shrewdly. “Justin didn’t.”

  Jess was too tired to really get mad. “He never met Dev,” she said. “She’s us.” She indicated the bios who were all turning in a circle, looking up at the huge hall. “Don’t diss them, Mike. My head hurts too much to kill ya.”

  Mike snorted softly. “Where’d he get the Bay coat?”

  “I gave it to him.” Jess watched Kurok approach. He looked almost as tired as she felt. “He was my pop’s tech back in the day.”

  “Huh.” Mike’s expression shifted a little.

  Kurok reached them with his crowd. The Interforce agents looked sullen and nervous. “Excuse me.” He edged past Mike. “Are you all right?” he asked them both. “Dev told me you got into some trouble.” He came close, grimacing when he saw Jess’s face.

  “Probably never been out of trouble.” Jess sighed and sat back down. “I figure we’ve got ’til the storm clears before we’re ass over teakettle again.”

  Kurok opened the med kit Dev put next to her. “Let’s do what we can until then.” He half turned and motioned to the crowd. “Frank, settle your group over near the wall there with the others.”

  Without a word, the Interforce agents and their techs went over to where there were a half dozen surviving others, all seated near the wall with drinks and fishrolls.”

  Kurok watched them then turned back around to Jess. He paused when he saw them all look at him in bemusement. “I was a senior,” he said with the faintest of smiles. “That’s trained in, too.”

  “It is.” Jess leaned back and held onto the edge of the box with her fingertips. “For all the good it’s gonna do us.”

  “Ah, you never know, Jesslyn.” Kurok motioned the bio alts over, and they slowly surrounded them, watching Jess with interest. “Now, my friends, you’re going to see an old fashioned technique called stitching.”

  Jess grimaced. “Ugh.”

  “Oh, it’ll only take a minute.”

  MET WAS ON their side for a change. Jess felt a sense of utter relief as she lay down flat on her back on the bed in the quarters they’d been assigned. She felt raw around all the spots Kurok had attended to.

  That had hurt. But now the painkillers had kicked in, and she’d been forced to lay down, the violent weather allowing for nothing else. Everything would wait now for that nonstop rumble and flash of lightning to end.

  In the distance she heard April and Doug recounting their part in the battle. The laughter and the clink of mugs let her relax a little.

  No one was going to try and kill her yet, though that was coming.

  The bio alts were settled in one of the storage areas with rations and padding to sit on while the storm raged overhead, and according to met it would remain that way for another six to eight hours.

  Nothing could fly. Even comms was disrupted. One of the bad ones that for once, for her, meant nothing but good. She could rest.

  So here she was in a big bed, with Dev curled up next to her, already showered, and in a fresh green jumpsuit from her kit and out like a light.

  It felt so nice to just be still. Jess had her eyes half closed, one arm draped over Dev’s compact body, not really giving a crap what anyone else thought about it. What the hell did it matter? She had no future. Neither in the force nor in the Bay. Now it was just a matter of waiting it out.

  She felt peaceful about it actually. Jess let her eyes close and immediately felt that sense of dislocation that meant sleep was coming at her fast. Maybe when she woke up it would already be over.

  Maybe someone would overpower the guard and kill her in her sleep.

  Dev stirred and snuggled closer to her. It brought a soothing warmth to her right side, and the gloomy thoughts faded, leaving her in just that moment of the present. And with that, she just let it go.

  Maybe she’d dream about space, and stars, and tumbling in the null.

  IT WAS THUNDER that woke her. Dev lifted her head and looked around, confused for a moment where she was. She didn’t recognize the rock walls at first or the loud sound of rain, much louder than she’d become used to in the Citadel.

  Then she remembered and she settled back down in the bed next to Jess. Aside from the thunder it was quiet, the voices she recalled before sleep were silenced, though far off she thought she heard footsteps echoing softly against the stone.

  She was in Drake’s Bay, where terrible things had happened.

  Jess was breathing deeply, sound asleep next to her. Dev closed her eyes again. She wasn’t on that ragged edge of exhaustion that had barely let her finish her shower and tumble into bed, but she felt she could still get more sleep.

  It had felt so amazing to be able to rest. She’d been so tired. To be able to curl up next to Jess and know for at least a little while she was safe was excellent.

  Now she had a piece of time to sit quietly and think about everything that had happened in the last few days, from their flight to station, to her losing her collar, to the escape back downside.

  She lifted a hand and touched her neck, slipping her fingers under the edge of her jumpsuit to feel again the smooth skin that was covered so long with metal. The back of her neck was no longer even sore, and she barely felt the small scabs over where Doctor Dan had removed the synaptics in her brain.

  Good and bad. The good being she no longer could be controlled, and the bad being everything she learned from now on had to be the old fas
hioned way. She would never again wake up with new knowledge effortlessly inserted into her head.

  Dev thought about that. Then she shrugged just a little. After all, that’s how Jess did everything, right? And the rest of the agents and techs.

  That pushed her thoughts to Interforce and what might happen with that since all the bad things. Were she and Jess still part of it?

  Did they still hold her contract?

  Did her contract actually mean anything now that she was no longer able to be programmed?

  So many questions. Dev was more awake now, and she was aware of being thirsty. She rolled carefully away from Jess, got up, and felt the rough surface of the seaweed mat rugs that covered the stone floor through her socks.

  She ran her fingers through her hair and slipped out of the room into the hallway, pausing to look out the plas round windows in the side of the cliff.

  Complete darkness outside, rain lashing against the surface, only the barest hint of whitecaps outside the Bay. She continued on and pushed the door open between the hall and the outer central space, careful to close the door softly behind her.

  Here it was also quiet. There were guards near the walls and they glanced at her as she proceeded through the open central space toward where she remembered there being a drink dispenser. To one side she saw the other Interforce agents and techs, the ones she didn’t know, lying down on some pads, asleep.

  Wasn’t that strange? They had been the enemy, and defeated, and now they slept in trust of the guards from the Bay standing against the walls with old fashioned guns and quietly proud expressions.

  One of them saw her watching and gave her a little nod. Was that acceptance? Approval? Dev retrieved a bottle of water and opened it. She took several swallows, almost sure the sound of her gulping was echoing across the hall. Then she removed another bottle and walked over to the guard, offering it to him.

  His face creased into a smile, and he took it. “I saw you fly into the cavern,” he said without preamble. “Freaking awesome.”