by Melissa Good
Her comm buzzed and she tapped it. “Drake.”
“We meeting?” Jason asked. “Weather tanked.”
“Yeah. Bring Elaine over. We’ll be plus eight to go, but might as well go over the outline.”
“Be there.” Jason cut the comm off.
Jess leaned over and tapped another button. “Dev?” She waited. After a pause, she tapped again. “Dev?”
With a soft crackle the circuit opened “Yes.” Dev’s voice responded. “My apologies. I was investigating the wet space.”
“The what?” Jess stared in puzzlement at the comm.
“There is a space in the sanitary facility with a pipe over it.”
“Oh. The shower,” Jess said. “You were taking one.” She listened to the faint sound of breathing coming over the comm, as her new next door neighbor considered what she’d said. That was one thing she’d noticed about Dev—she waited to talk until she knew what she wanted to say.
“Yes,” Dev finally said. “If you mean I went under the pipe and got very wet,” she added. “That was unusual.”
“You don’t have showers upside?” Jess found herself interested by this odd conversation.
“We do,” Dev said. “But they don’t involve getting wet.”
“Oh,” Jess said. “Well, dry off and come over. We’re going to run the plan.”
“All right,” Dev replied. “Thank you.”
The comm cut off. Jess gazed at it in bemusement for a minute, then she went back to the console screen and started assembling the information she would need to lay out the statistics and the routes to her colleagues.
Two minutes, and a knock on the inner door sounded. Jess pressed the ingress key and the door slid open, revealing Dev’s slim figure. her hair was damp, slicked back off her forehead, giving her finely etched features a slightly tougher cast. “So water’s a novelty for ya, huh?”
Dev sat down in one of the chairs across from Jess’s workspace. “Running water, yes. They made all the water in the crèche. They told us it was expensive. The natural borns had it, I think, in their quarters but we used flash rad to clean our skins.”
Jess leaned on her elbows. “Radiation?”
Dev nodded. “It would burn off the first layer or so of skin,” she said. “Effective way to get rid of dirt and any bacteria.” She inspected her hand. “I think I like water better.”
A soft chime came at the outer door. Jess pressed the release button, then sat back as Jason and Elaine entered. “C’mon in.” She swiveled both displays around and slid them back so everyone could see them as they approached and took the seats next to Dev.
“Okay.” Jess sorted out the sheets. “Weather cranked us.”
“Heard that,” Jason said. “Shaking the roof upstairs.”
Jess nodded. “Big e-stat storm coming overhead. Met figures it’ll clear by oh six.” She touched a control and displayed a map on the screen. “Here’s the frontal boundary.”
“Big one,” Elaine said. “Wouldn’t want to be out in that. Is it going to reach the other side?”
“That’s our cover.” Jess ran the scan forward. “See that? It’s scheduled over the drop site just before twelve hundred. We come in behind it. “
Both Jason and Elaine nodded.
“Then we...” Jess motioned between herself and Dev. “Split off and head for the front door of the lab there.” She pointed. “You two come around the side here and tuck in behind the cliffs.”
“You’re not going to drop in there, Jess,” Jason said. “That’s suicide.”
Jess shook her head. “Not in my plans but I want them to think I am. I’ll take out the outer post here.” She pointed at a lonely outcropping surrounded by sea. “With the guns and then come in at wave level.”
“Freak them out,” Elaine said. “And with the chop they can’t be sure you’re alone.”
Jess nodded.
“So we wait for the plugs to rush off to grab you, and we go get Sandy and Mike,” Jason said. “We get out. You get out, you join us, we run for home.”
Jess nodded again. “Real basic. Nothing fancy. We just want to get them back.” She pushed two slips of film at them. “Here’s the plotting coordinates. If I were you, I’d wait until we’re underway to program ‘em in.”
Both agents looked very uncomfortable. “Brent’s gonna freak.”
Jess shrugged. “Fact is, Bain said he thought someone was still talking from inside. You want to risk it?”
“Jess.” Elaine leaned back and crossed her legs at the ankles. “I was thinking about that. Doesn’t make sense they’d use the same vector twice. They don’t, y’know?”
Jess grunted.
“How do we know it’s not...I mean, maybe it was Bricker,” Jason said. “I remember taking classes with him a year ago. He didn’t seem like such a hothead jerk back then. I liked him. So maybe he was turned, and he turned Josh?”
“Jace’s right. He has changed,or he did change, anyway,” Elaine said. “When he was a group leader, I always thought you could trust him. Hell, he used to play slam ball with us late watch.”
It was tempting. Jess studied her colleagues and the silently watching bio alt. Tempting to think it was all Bricker and now that he was dead, they could relax and be safe again. “Josh liked Bricker,” Jess said. “He used to have dinner and drinks with him.”
Elaine eyed her. “Rumor said more.”
Jess put it all aside. “Maybe.” She lifted a hand. “But right now we don’t have time to look at that. Let’s get the teams back, then we can regroup. If we’re lucky, you’re right and it was him, but if you don’t tell your techs and the plan gets spilled, we know two things. One, you were wrong and it wasn’t him, and two, there’s still someone out there but it’s not Brent or Tucker.”
“Damn I hope it was,” Jason said. “I hate walking around with clouds over my head. And we’ve got the new group coming in next month on top of it. That’s twelve more unknown vectors.”
Six new agents, six new techs, fresh from the field school. “I know,” Jess said. “But it’ll be good to get some of those empty bays back in action. I’m starting to feel like a dying breed here.”
They were all silent after that.
“So, flight deck at oh four?” Jason finally said. “I’m going to get some bunk time. My head’s exploding.” He stood up, stretching his body out. “Meet you all for breakfast?”
Jess and Elaine nodded, and Elaine stood to join him in leaving. They stood in awkward silence, then they turned and went to the door, leaving Jess and Dev alone.
Jess studied the door somberly for a moment, before she turned her attention back to Dev. “You ready to do this?” She asked bluntly.
Dev considered the question. “I have done all the reviews I can on the sims. I am as prepared to execute your request as I can be, given the circumstances.”
“Sims aren’t the real thing.”
“I know,” Dev said. “I’ll do the best I can.”
They were both quiet for a minute. “So you figured out the shower, huh?” Jess said. “I never thought about that whole water thing upside. We have so much of it.” She paused. “Want to see a lot more than that shower?”
“Sure.”
“C’mon.” Jess got up. “It’s close to dark, but we can still see it.” She led the way out of her quarters and along the corridor, turning left at the central corridor, heading down a dark gray painted hall.
They passed three section scans, then she turned right and went into a longer corridor with low, green tinted lights. It was empty except for the two of them, and as they continued, the air became a little thicker and wetter.
“We can only stay out a few minutes. Storm’s coming overhead.” Jess turned a final corner and faced a thick metal door with a prominent palm scan. Letters stenciled in black on it were clearly visible.
“External Access. This is an airlock.” Dev read them. “What does that mean? In the créche, airlocks were dangerous places.�
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“Not so bad here.” Jess grinned, and keyed the door. It opened with a grinding, sucking sound revealing a square metal box. She stepped inside and waited as Dev joined her with a somewhat cautious look at the stark walls.
Then Jess keyed the outer door and processed the lock. The inner door sealed, and then the outer released, with a pressure change that made their ears pop. At once, the box was filled with the intense smell of salt and a damp wind buffeted them with a roar.
Jess stepped forward onto a small rocky outcropping, and leaned her arms on the rough stone wall. After a moment’s hesitation, Dev joined her, their hair lashed back by the ferocious wind.
Dev put her hands on the stone, the surface cold and damp under her touch as the airlock door closed behind them.
It was strange. She was looking out over a wild, white ruffled surface under a cap of solid, multi layered dark and light gray. In the distance she could hear a heavy, almost continuous rumble. “W...what is this?” She asked, raising her voice above the sound.
“It’s the ocean,” Jess said. “This is what used to be called the Atlantic Ocean.” She glanced around at the high cliffs, weather worn and stark. “It’s water.”
Dev looked out over the wild scene, breathing in the rich, mineral scented air. The water was only about a hundred feet below them, crashing against the wall of rock sending spray up so high it almost reached them.
It was amazing. Dev could only stare at it in wonder, it was so unlike anything she’d ever experienced, or thought she would experience. “It’s big.”
Jess chuckled. “It’s very big. We’ll be flying over it tomorrow.” She touched the wall. “These cliffs this old place is tunneled into shows two sides. Backside’s a wasteland. This side...at least you get the sense the sea’s alive.”
She looked down at the surging waves. “It’s our life now. We generate power by it, take food from it, and it’s why you have a water shower. We’ve got plenty of it. About the only thing in the world we have plenty of.”
Dev felt the rumble move through her, and looked out over the surface of the water, seeing a seething motion that seemed never ending. She edged forward and looked down over the wall, seeing the white foam at the base of the cliff washing over the rocks and rushing in and out of holes she caught a brief glimpse of.
They were standing on a small niche, with room for probably a dozen people on it. “What is this for?” She asked Jess. “This little place?”
“Just for us to look,” Jess said. “To see storms coming in.” She pointed at a line of gray. “That’s what’s keeping us here tonight instead of going out. See those flashes?”
“Yes.”
“Electromagnetic surges. They’ll knock a carrier right out of the sky. Shorts the systems out.”
“Oh.” Dev could see the crackling bolts, and the flashes in the far off clouds. “That sounds difficult.”
“We have a cavern downstairs,” Jess said. “Sometimes we go down there when it’s calmer, and swim.”
“Swim?”
“We jump in the water. In the ocean.”
Dev looked at her with unabashed wide eyed astonishment.
The rumble got a lot louder and Jess turned and keyed the door. “Time to go in. Storm’s too close.” She waited for the panel to open, then ducked inside and closed the door as soon as Dev cleared it. When it shut, the sudden lack of sound was almost ear ringing.
Dev ran her fingers through her hair, straightening the wind blown disarray. “That was amazing. Thank you for showing it to me.” She licked her lips a little. “It’s salty.”
“Yes,” Jess said. “Ocean’s full of salt. We scrub it to make it drinkable and then the salt’s used for cooking with the rest of the stuff they scrape out of it.”
They walked along in silence for a few minutes. “Do the colors mean something?” Dev asked as they crossed from the gray back into the dark blue, heading for the lighter blue of the residential corridor.
“Sort of. They say they used to all be the same color, and everyone spent all their time getting lost so they changed them up so at least you can see if you’re in ops, that’s the blue tones, or med, that’s white, or security, that’s green and so on. There’s a chart in the docs in the system. You can look it up.”
Dev thought about that. “They did that upside too,” she said. “You could tell where you were, what level, and that kind of thing by the walls.” She paused. “But it wasn’t as big as this and there was nothing like what you just showed me. The only thing a little bit like that was the null grav gym.”
Jess keyed her door open. “The what?” She waved Dev forward.
“Null gravity gym. It was a big padded place they turned off grav in, and you got to play catch me, and ball, and do exercises.” Dev said. “It was in the top of the crèche, and it had a clear ceiling, You could float for a minute, sometimes, and just watch the stars.”
“Stars.” Jess paused in the center of her quarters. “I’ve read about those. They showed us vid in school.”
Dev stopped at the internal door between their quarters and looked back. “If you ever come to the crèche, I’ll show them to you. I think they’re really nice, but not nearly as exciting as the ocean is.”
Jess met her eyes, then looked away with the faintest of smiles. “Get some rest. The alarm will go off at 0300. Then we’ll get to see if Bricker and Bain were right and you’re worth something to the job or not.”
Dev nodded, then passed through into her own bunk, letting the door shut behind her.
Jess looked at the door briefly. Then she started toward her workspace, but midway there changed her mind and went back to her bed instead. She lay down on it and put her hands behind her head, looking up at the mica infested ceiling.
“Stars,” she murmured.
DEV WENT TO the wardrobe module and examined the drawers again. In the crèche, she’d slept in the soft paper garments they all changed into before getting into the sleep pods, which would be sucked off and recycled the following morning.
Here she wasn’t really sure what to do. After a few moments thought, she stripped out of the jumpsuit and hung it up, leaving her in her underwear. Then she put on a light undershirt she’d found on the shelves that came down to her mid thigh.
That seemed all right. She went over and pulled the covers down on the bed, climbing into it and pulling them back over her. The surface of the bed conformed to her at once, and the lights dimmed. Then she felt the covers warm to her skin.
She was tired. With the time alteration and the early start to her day, coupled with the tension and activity, she’d been on edge since they’d left the crèche. Now she was glad to relax her body, and know she had some time to rest before her first big trial.
It was exhausting to be in such a strange place, with all strange people, all disliking her for various reasons.
No one wanted her to be here. She was a little sad about that, because having a placement here had been so exciting for her, despite how hard and strange the programming had been. She’d been looking forward to using that training, and it made her feel bad to know that so many people here were against that.
Only the man with the gun seemed to be for it, and Doctor Dan. The agents didn’t seem to trust her, and the other techs definitely didn’t want her around.
Then there was Jess.
Dev thought about Jess. She had said that she didn’t consider Dev a real part of her team, just a driver.
It seemed quite clear.
But really, Jess was the only one in the place who had a friendly word for her, and who had offered to help her find her way.
Was that because the man with the gun wanted it that way? Dev rolled onto her side and settled her head comfortably on the pillow. If so, she was glad. At least there was someone who was willing to talk to her like she was a real person.
She wanted to do well for Jess. She’d gone through the sim a dozen times, and hoped it would be enough to let her drive the
carrier for real.
She trusted her programming. She only hoped Jess would come to trust her.
Chapter Six
THE ALARM BONGED softly at 0300. Jess blinked as the lights inside adjusted and produced a quiet glow that gently illuminated her quarters. With automatic motions, she got out of bed and shook herself, letting the last shreds of sleep fall away.
Wisps of her last dream faded with them and she didn’t try to recall what it was. There was an aching tension in her shoulders that meant it was a bad one and she was just glad it hadn’t gone on long enough to wake her screaming.
She retrieved a mug of kack from the dispenser and opened it, taking a long swallow as she walked into the sanitary unit as the lights came up inside. She used the facility, then started the shower running, pausing before she entered to go back into the main area and trigger comms to the overhead speaker on listen.
The familiar drone of the ops center filled the air and she listened for a minute, hearing nothing alarming. She took off her sleepwear and stepped into the steaming water.
It felt good and she stood for a bit, letting the water pound against her. She pulled in a breath full of steam, the flat metallic scent of the water so very familiar to her filling her lungs. She took a handful of scrub and burnished her skin with it, then used another handful and washed her hair.
Old custom. Most people in the world now used dry scrub or didn’t bother. The rain came every day, and everyone got caught out in it. To deliberately wet yourself was something that had come to be seen as wasteful and strange, but here in the citadel they all did.
Jess rinsed her hair out again, and stood for another moment, letting the hot water relax her muscles. It was also one of the marks of Interforce, that neatly cropped, clean shaven look that was a long ago holdover from the national forces they’d all descended from.
She got out and shut the water down, then toweled herself dry and made her way through the main chamber to the dressing station, popping it open and taking out a set of underwear and putting them on. Then she opened the second part of her cabinet and removed an insertion suit, slipping into it and snapping the catches.