Of Sea and Stars (Partners Book 3) Read online

  “Yeah.”

  “You can always depend on personal envy. They think your brother was a shithead. Most of them are glad you offed him,” Alters said. “We just need to find out who his contact was.”

  Jess had sensed that. The undercurrent of glee that greeted her on her return and the intense concentration on them in the mess hall was clear. The essential “they” that was the collective feeling of the stakehold had been against this.

  If they hadn’t found the cavern, they’d have been led to it. Jess understood now what the undercurrent was and why she and her team had been given the unspoken welcome. “Yeah.” She nibbled the round thing. “Just stings.”

  “Unexpected, here,” Alters said. “That whole cock up with you and the shares, though, is going to work to our advantage.”

  Jess sighed.

  “Maybe to your advantage, too, Drake,” he said. “I had an idea on the way over. We’ll put a force here, you in charge of it. Going to have to defend this place until we figure out what the end game is.”

  Jess drew breath to protest, then paused.

  Alters smiled, seeing it. “You’re learning. Even politics can be strategic, Drake. It’s not all just blowing things up.”

  DEV WAS CURLED up in her hammock, the room darkened around her save the glow from her scanner screen. She was sorting and consolidating all the data she’d gathered, putting it into segments and transferring it to the greater storage of the carrier.

  The hammock was comfortable but she was halfway wishing they were still in their space, wanting the comfort of the familiar surroundings and wishing Jess were there, to make this area seem more correct.

  The people here were becoming more curious about her. She’d found them going out of their way to make eye contact, not at all easy since they were tall as Jess was and she wasn’t. The man Chris had brought over some other techs to talk to her, and that had worked out all right, she thought.

  The finding of the plants had shocked and distressed her. She had the seed lots and there was no question that they’d come from the storage lockers on the bio station, a quick search of her database in the Citadel had confirmed it, but the transfer had happened before she’d even been sent downworld.

  She drummed her fingers on the sides of the scanner. Would Doctor Dan know how they’d been sent? Who they’d been sent to? She grimaced in some discomfort. Would Doctor Dan have been involved?

  After all he knew this place. Had been here. Had seemed silently delighted over the present Jess had given him that had come from here, the shirt he’d taken back to station with him.

  It made sense that he might be interested in something that involved this location, the place both Jess and her father had come from.

  But nowhere in all the data could she find his details, so that was a comfort at least and all the work kept her from thinking about what Jess had said, about going back to station.

  Her stomach clenched even thinking about that.

  She was afraid they would have to, that this trail of the seeds would lead them there, and Jess would want to find out how they’d gotten to her home place. And where Jess went, she would go.

  But she didn’t want to.

  The door opened, but her scanner had identified the body approaching minutes ago, and she looked up to find Jess looking back at her as she came over and put her hands on the hammock Dev was curled up in. “Everything correct?”

  “No.” Jess regarded her. “Everything is crap in a basket. Got room in that hammock for me?”

  “DANIEL?”

  Dan Kurok turned to find Randall Doss standing there, apparently having called his name more than once. “Yes, Randall?”

  They couldn’t be more different men in appearance. Doss, the director of the science station was tall and a little rounded, with a large, moon shaped head and dark, curly hair in perpetual disarray. He wore glasses and usually had an expression of slight bewilderment on his face.

  A scientist risen above the work, now mostly concerned with pacifying both those above and below him.

  Kurok, his chief genetic scientist, was a head shorter, with a compact body and thick blond hair sprinkled with silver gray and a gently twinkling pair of green eyes that nevertheless held a sharpness the director’s brown ones didn’t.

  “It’s time for the meeting,” Doss said. “Are you sure you’re ready for it?”

  “Yes,” Kurok said, putting his hands in the pouch pocket of the woven outershirt he was wearing. “More than ready, Randall. Come along.” He eased around the taller man and headed for the conference space on the uppermost level of the space station.

  The executive level, where the most senior members of the station had their offices, and also spaces available to meet with guests and notables.

  It was one of these that they went to, a room made from curved clear flexible plas, shielded from the shifting path of the sun. It contained an oval table and comfortable chairs and there was a surface on the outside wall that could be darkened for projection.

  There were six people inside, five men and one woman, all dressed in space jumpsuits. All of them shifted and swiveled in their chairs as Doss and Kurok entered, and the casual chatter trailed off.

  “Hello, everyone.” Doss went to the head of the table and took a seat. Kurok sat down at the far end facing him, leaning back with his hands still tucked inside his pocket. “Thank you all for coming here today, I appreciate the promptness.”

  “Well, Randall, hope you have good news for us,” the man seated next to him said. “We’ve been waiting a long time for the two of you. We’re busy people, you know.”

  “Us, too,” Kurok said.

  Doss looked uncomfortable. “Well, Charles, you know this sort of thing takes time sometimes. It’s a new process.”

  “So you keep telling us,” the woman said. “None of us wants to wait eighteen years for this project to be profitable. So what’s the story?”

  Doss cleared his throat. “Daniel?”

  The people in the room turned to face Kurok. He blinked mildly back at them, the wash of deflected and filtered sunlight splashing across his chest. “Certainly, we have a new schema that will be the basis of a set that is currently about to go into production, pending one last test.”

  “Another delay?” The woman sighed. “For crying out loud, Doctor Kurok.”

  “Not so much. I want the prototype to come in so I can do a synapse compare,” Kurok said. “So that has been requested. Always better to tweak before we commit the eggs than after.”

  “So you’re bringing the demo unit back up here?” Charles Tennit asked, propping his head up on his fist. “I thought it was assigned.”

  “She is,” Kurok replied. “I’ve asked the contractor to release her back to me for a few days. With some luck her natural born partner will accompany her, and I can get a full set of metrics.”

  “Is that important, or necessary?” Charles asked, with a touch of impatience. “We had nothing to do with who it’s assigned to.”

  Kurok looked at him in silence, until he looked away, a faint flush appearing on his face. “Have any of you ever met an Interforce agent?” he asked. “Since this contract directly affects them, maybe you should before making nonsensical statements like that.”

  They looked a little horrified and shifted in their seats. “We’ve heard all we need to about them,” Charles said, stiffly.

  “And then?” the woman asked. “After you make these tests, Daniel?”

  “And then, Auralia, I can release the set. We already have the gel base set up to receive them.”

  She nodded, pursing her lips, their surface painted a permanent coral pink. “A few more days can’t change the commit, of course,” she said. “Sorry, Daniel. There’s been a lot of interest over this advance, and not just from Interforce.”

  “I know.” Kurok tilted his head a trifle. “But what you really want to know is, can I take the advances I did with Dev and put them into currently grown sets
to get money for them before the new set matures.”

  “Yes,” the woman said. “I don’t want to wait eighteen years for results. You tweaked this one in a few weeks, why not others?”

  “Not that easy. Dev was different...”

  The woman rolled her eyes, and Charles slapped his hand on the table.

  “She’s an experimental unit. NM Dev. New Model, Developmental,” Kurok said, with a touch of sharpness in his voice. “Her synaptic structure is different. That was the whole damn point.”

  Charles stood up and started pacing. “How different could it be, Daniel?” he asked. “What changes did you make to make her so successful a unit?” He leaned on the table and stared down at Kurok. “Or is the truth you really can’t duplicate it, and it’s a fluke?”

  Unruffled, Kurok laced his fingers together and produced a faint smile. “It’s true that Dev succeeded at a higher level than originally anticipated, and it’s also true I’d never tried that complex a design before. But relax, Charles, I know why she ended up as advanced as she did, and yes, I can duplicate that.”

  “What did you change, Daniel?” Auralia asked, leaning toward him.

  “If I start quoting nucleus counts you all will be asleep in a heartbeat.” He smiled at her. “You know this is a highly technical science.”

  A subterfuge of course. Kurok knew exactly what it was he’d changed but saw no advantage to anyone if he revealed it to these financially focused individuals in terms they could understand.

  Yet.

  “We just don’t know if we can divert an existing set,” Doss said from the other end of the table. “We’re trying some things. That’s all we can say.”

  “Not good enough, Randall.” Charles turned and stared at him. “We need profits. We’re not making enough on the sets you have in production now.” He stood up and spread his hands out. “This station’s expensive.”

  “Charles, please chill out,” another of the men said. “This was a freak chance that worked. Don’t harass them because of that.”

  Charles rounded on him. “Interforce wants this now, not in twenty years. It was a success, Steven. Yes, awesome. Now they want more.” He glanced at Kurok. “And word’s out to more than them.”

  “Are you all done pontificating?” Kurok asked, regarding the curved ceiling. “I have work to do that you all constantly tell me is both expensive and urgent.”

  Doss sighed. “Daniel.”

  “C’mon.” Charles waved at the rest of them. “We’re getting nothing as usual. Let’s go see what lies we can come up with for the investors in this place.”

  They all left, leaving Kurok and Doss alone in the room, the door shutting behind them with a sucking hiss.

  “Daniel, must you antagonize them? They’re the board’s representatives. You don’t make things any easier.”

  Kurok got up and went to the outer wall and looked outside. The turning of the station brought the stars into view and he regarded the velvety black of space. “It’s not my job to make things easy, Randall,” he said. “I’m a scientist, not a politician. You know that.”

  Doss sighed again. “When the unit comes here, will you be able to do something to duplicate the success? Will it help?”

  “She,” Kurok said. “When Dev comes here, I might get some hints from how she integrated that could give me some ideas to tweak some other sets. Maybe.” He turned to look at Doss. “If she lets me look.”

  Doss stared at him. “What do you mean by that, Daniel?”

  He shrugged and smiled. “She’s got a mind of her own. She’s lived independently since she left here and I don’t really know how that’s all going to play out when she gets here. I’ll ask her. There’s nothing that says she’ll agree.”

  “Daniel!” Doss looked almost horrified. “But she’s a bio alt. We control her. She’s a construct! What are you saying?”

  Kurok turned again to face the stars. “I’m saying these changes I did that make this new model so valuable for you all might end up someplace we didn’t expect, that’s all Randall.” His breath fogged against the surface. “They are human beings.”

  “Legally they aren’t.”

  “Scientifically they are.” Kurok turned and leaned his back against the outer wall, something almost no one else on station would do. The clear surface unsettled them, like they were perched on the edge of a drop.

  But then, Kurok had spent more time downside than most, doing things that would horrify his colleagues if they knew. “And as a scientist, you know as well as I do that’s what really matters.”

  “Well of course that’s true.” The director came over to him. “Daniel, this could be so important for us. Please don’t antagonize the board. Please? They don’t like it.”

  Kurok smiled unexpectedly, a twinkle appearing in his eyes that wasn’t all humor. “Of course they don’t. But I do. And the truth is they’re dependent on me to replicate this.” He started for the door. “So they better chill out.”

  Doss watched him leave, shaking his head and retreating back to the front of the room to get a cup of tea.

  DEV WALKED QUIETLY through the doorway into the landing bay, producing brief smiles for the people inside who looked up to watch her pass.

  They seemed more curious than unfriendly, not bothering to hide their stares. She detected no danger from them, which was a little surprising given that Jess told her how much her kind was disliked here.

  She wondered if it was the fact that she had her collar covered that made them less incorrect. After all, with her jumpsuit on, there was no obvious difference between her and anyone else in the cavern.

  She triggered the unlock for the hatch and watched it open then made her way back to the pilot’s station. She sat down in her station and started up the flight sequence. She glanced out the window and saw Jess’s tall figure enter from the hallway.

  “Hey,” Jess said.

  She regarded Jess in silence for a moment. “You look very attractive in that clothing.”

  In the act of drawing a breath, Jess paused, one eyebrow shifting upward. “I do?”

  Dev nodded.

  Jess glanced down at herself. Instead of her usual black jumpsuit, she’d put on a thickly woven pullover in Drake’s Bay colors and a pair of sharkskin pants tucked into her regulation boots. “They told me not to freak out the civ council more than I had to,” she said. “So I found this in a drawer in one of the store rooms.”

  “I like the colors,” Dev said, swiveling around in her seat and preparing the carrier for flight

  Comms crackled. “Tac two to Tac one.”

  Jess pushed her comm link into place. “Tac one. Go ahead.”

  April and Doug were on patrol outside, searching for the downed mini transport. “Tac one, target spotted, endit.”

  “Stand by we’ll join you.” Jess got her restraints in place. “Let’s fly, Dev. We’ll check out what the kids found first and then head over to the meeting.” She settled back as she felt the carrier shift under her, watching the forward view in her screens as Dev prepared to take them out.

  She felt a bit uneasy with all the change and at the prospect of staying here at the Bay for a while. It felt like things were slipping away from her, and though Alters had confidently sold her on commanding the small force he ordered up, she wasn’t sure how that all was going to turn out.

  She wasn’t sure she was that kind of leader, outside being responsible for herself and Dev, or maybe just the kids.

  A lot of other agents were going to get a chance to move ahead at base now. Jess scowled. Just when things were going really good for her, too.

  “Jess?”

  “Mmm?” Jess looked up as they exited the cavern and into free air, a morning of only drifting mist lacking a storm for a change. The wind was only thrumming gently against the hull as Dev banked around and started for the outer edge of the half circle Bay.

  “I can stay here with you, correct?” Dev asked, after she finished the maneuve
r. “You said you were not going back to the Citadel.”

  Jess went still for a moment, her mind racing, going over what Alters had told her. What had he said? He was sending a force, she’d be in charge. Had he inferred anything at all about Dev? That he’d want her to go back to the base with him?

  The sudden gut clench relaxed as she replayed the conversation and confirmed to herself that nothing had been said about Dev, one way or the other.

  “Yes,” she said finally, aware of how stiff Dev’s body had gotten. “You’re my partner. That didn’t change just because they want me to be a boof head here for a while. And he didn’t mention anything again about us going topside.”

  “Excellent,” Dev said. “I was worried about that this morning.”

  That made Jess smile. “That why you skipped breakfast?”

  Dev glanced in the reflector, a sheepish expression on her face. “Yes.”

  Jess put her hands behind her head. “I’ll make it up to you when we get back. Don’t worry, Dev. You ain’t going nowhere. You’re mine.”

  That was excellent. Dev got her course set in and maneuvered through the pass, spotting Doug’s carrier on the horizon. “There they are.” She boosted a little, increasing their speed as they skimmed over the rocky ground.

  It was rough, and wet, and there were layers of moss spreading on either side of the blast area that they’d fired the night before. There were small figures out there working, and she was low enough to see them stop and look up as the carrier went over. “What are they doing?”

  “Scraping lichen.” Jess glanced into the screen. “Something I never wanted to end up doing, tell you that. It’s hard work.”

  Dev considered that. “Isn’t what we do hard?”

  “Different kind of hard,” Jess said. “That’s hard, and boring, and potentially death making.” She paused thoughtfully. “Well, maybe it is a little like our jobs,” she admitted, with a wry smile. “Not so much boring I hope.”