Of Sea and Stars (Partners Book 3) Read online

  Without being asked, Dev scanned the tray, running the results through her biologic analyzer. “Jess, that is leaf tea.” She paused as the man offering the beverage stopped in front of them, and Jess stood up to retrieve two cups.

  The man looked at the two of them, then at the cups. “Council members only,” he said gruffly.

  Jess smiled. “Going to take it away from me?”

  “We have rules here.” He returned her stare boldly. “Everyone follows them, even Drakes.”

  Jess turned and handed a cup to Dev, then she turned back to face him. “Ever had an active Interforce ops agent be a council member?” She watched him frown. “Here’s a clue. We come as a pair. We put our lives on the line for you rockscrapers every day. Don’t grudge someone I regard as family a cup of damned tea.”

  Her voice was quiet, but serious, and lacked its usual mocking tone. After a brief moment, he nodded and turned away to take his tray on down the line.

  Jess resumed her seat, inspecting her cup with a suspicious sniff. “Did you mean this is real, old timey tea?”

  “Yes.” Dev took a sip of it. “I’m sorry if my being here is incorrect and is causing discomfort.”

  “I’m not.” Jess took a swallow of the beverage and licked her lips thoughtfully. “It’s okay. I think I like sea grape better.”

  “Me too,” Dev said. “I have had leaf tea before but it was a different kind than this.”

  “Wants some honey in it.” Jess glanced around the chamber, with a slightly mocking smile, their almost empty section now almost awkwardly obvious. “Rest of them bring guards, and spongers. They shouldn’t say a word about me bringing you.”

  A silver haired woman in a lined over-tunic went to the middle of the open space and held up a little device, moving it and producing a tinkling tone. “To order.”

  Comp had very little information on the council, so Dev sharpened her attention, ready to learn something new. She saw some of the others watching Jess, and in the section next to them the man who had spoken to Jess was laughing at something.

  The silver haired woman put the device down on the wooden podium she was standing next to and put her hands on top of it. “Eastern Seaboard council, fourth quarter, year three hundred fifty-two.”

  Jess put her tea down on the small table at the edge of their section and sat up.

  The woman looked directly at her. “First order of business, let’s get this straightened out. I’m told there’s a change of stakeholder at Drake’s Bay?”

  “No bullshit. I like it.” Jess got up, went to the rail, put her hand on it and vaulted over. The round section in the middle was a body length down and she landed lightly, walking over to the podium and extending her hand with the comp chip in it. “Jesslyn Drake.”

  The woman took the chip gingerly. Then she walked over to an old console in the center of the back of the circle and inserted it.

  One of the men in a section stood up and faced her. “You’re active Interforce. Not allowed by reg.”

  Jess stood with her hands folded in front of her and shrugged slightly. “They’re our regs. We can change them.”

  A low murmur went up around the circle. Dev watched everyone carefully and kept her scanner tuned for energy flares.

  “Not fair, Drake,” the man objected. “You’ve got an elected stakeholder there.”

  She smiled. “Not anymore. Jimmy’s no longer with us.” She folded her arms over her chest, rotating a little to scan the circle. “He made one bad deal too many.”

  The woman behind the console looked up and cleared her throat. “This seems in order.” She sounded profoundly surprised. “You have the legitimate number of shares.”

  “Dad was a stickler for details,” Jess said. “That was Justin Drake. He coded his shares to my civ profile.”

  The woman looked at the screen. “They were transferred. I see that.”

  “She’s Interforce,” the man said. “Active duty!”

  “They, as in Interforce, have released the sanction. It’s their sanction, not ours,” the woman told him, sounding even more surprised. “Authorized by the directorate in Pichu.” She looked back at the records. “Their intent is for Agent Drake to remain in control of the stakehold.”

  A lot of voices now rose. Dev set her device to record them, in case Jess wanted to inspect them later. Jess returned to the railing, then leaped up and grabbed it, hauling herself up and over it and back into the chair she’d started from in an easy motion.

  “These individuals are not pleased,” Dev said.

  Jess folded her hands over her stomach and watched the rest of the room stand and mill around in their sections talking loudly, fully aware that no amount of discussion could actually change the facts she’d just recorded.

  They couldn’t vote her out, couldn’t lodge a protest, couldn’t even legally draw a suit about it, and any of them who might want to do something more direct and physical had the simple fact that she was, in fact, active Interforce to deal with.

  The rest of them had brought guards. Big, bulky figures with clubs at their belts and old, well cared for blasters in holsters at their hip. Murders weren’t unknown, and more than one stakeholder argument had ended in bloodshed, or gotten into trouble either coming or going to the council.

  The closest thing they had to law was Interforce Security and their own guards, and even Interforce Security would think twice before crossing Jess.

  Jess was more trouble than most of them wanted to deal with. So she smiled benignly at the crowd, and relaxed, waiting for all the chaos to die down so they could start plowing through whatever the agenda was. She glanced at Dev, who was busy watching everyone around them, finding her profile unexpectedly engaging. “Hey Dev.”

  The pale, sea colored eyes went to her at once. “Yes?”

  “Whatcha doing?”

  Dev scooted to the edge of her chair and shared her scanner screen, still holding it down low so it couldn’t be seen. “I was recording this for you, and also, running some bio scans on these individuals. None of them seem related to you.”

  Jess laughed. “Did you expect them to be?”

  Dev started to answer, then paused as the woman in the center of the room rang the tinkling device again.

  “Show me later.” Jess patted her knee and returned her attention to the council. “Bet most of them are related to sea cucumbers.”

  Sea cucumbers. Dev frowned and sent a quick search into the scanner’s memory, then relaying the request to the carrier. She looked at the picture it returned, then looked at the people, then looked at Jess.

  IT WAS NICE to get back outside. The weather had turned colder, but the clouds seemed to have thinned a little, and there was less moisture in the air than there had been.

  Jess leaned her arm on Dev’s shoulders, watching the pilots with slightly narrowed eyes. “Time to get back to the ranch. C’mon.” She nudged Dev toward the carrier.

  “Drake!” The rep from Quebec waved a hand at her.

  “Got a call. Need to move.” Jess escaped into the carrier. “Send comms.” She hit the hatch control and dropped into her seat, growling a little. “Stupid crap.” She slapped her restraints in place. “Get moving, Dev, before another idiot tries to bang on the door.”

  Dev obediently got the engines going, hitting the landing jets and boosting the carrier up and off the concrete. There were still two flyers on the ground, and she saw the man who had been talking to Jess and the tall man from Quebec talking to each other near one of them.

  She turned off the external sensors as they rose up out of audible range and she gently drifted over the big building, circling it before she laid in the course back to Drake’s Bay.

  “What did you think, Dev?” Jess asked. “Bunch of crap ass, huh?”

  Dev glanced at the reflector. “I was confused. I wasn’t really at all sure what was going on.”

  “No, me either.” Jess sighed. “Furstan suspects something.”

  “A
bout the plants?”

  “About something. He wants to come visit.” Jess shook her head. “And Quebec City. Jostar hinted they had a signed deal with us for something.” She released the belts and got up, moving restlessly over to the drink dispenser.

  They headed down the slope from the ruined city, and Dev could feel the wind rising as it tugged against the profile of the carrier. Ahead of them was a flat rocky stretch with jagged hills on either side and a large body of water in the distance.

  It was dark and light grays, greens and the flat black blue of the water, and as they started over it the rain started coming down.

  Jess came over and claimed the jumpseat, handing over a cup of kack as she extended her legs out along the floor. She tipped her head back and regarded the wash of water cascading over the forward shield, the faint rumble of thunder coming through the plas. “Ah, Dev.”

  “Yes?” Dev said. “You seem upset.”

  “I am. I don’t like all this. I don’t like the politics and the yakking. I want to go back to the Citadel.”

  Dev decided that fit how she felt as well. “It would be good to be in our space,” she said. “It’s more comfortable than the quarters they assigned us at your place.”

  Jess remained thoughtfully quiet, her brows twitching a little.

  “And I kind of miss the pool,” Dev concluded. “I thought my last session was pretty successful.”

  Jess finally sighed. “I forget sometimes that I’ve spent more time there than I ever did at home.” She paused. “At the Bay, I mean. Crap I left when I was five. I think I spent a total of two months there since then.”

  Dev watched her from the corner of her eye, the turned up collar of the pullover giving her a different profile. “Are you in discomfort over it?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Jess answered. “Well, no. I mean...” She made a low noise in her throat. “I don’t know.” She cradled her cup in both hands, drawing her knees up and resting her elbows on them in oddly cramped discomfort. “It’s weird.”

  Dev trimmed the engines, her eyes flicking over the boards. “I think I understand. It would be weird for me if I had to go back to the crèche,” she said. “It would cause me discomfort, because I’m used to something different now.”

  Jess was glad to shift the focus from her squirminess to Dev’s. “We treat you like one of us.”

  “No.” Dev shook her head faintly. “You don’t really, Jess. You always know what I am, and so does everyone else at the base. What is different is that I have the ability to interact with you freely. You don’t know how I’m expected to react.”

  Jess puzzled over that for a few minutes. “What does that mean?” she finally said.

  Dev turned her head and regarded her. “What I just said to you. If I had said that to a proctor in the crèche, I would have been taken in for some adjustment. They do not want me to understand as well as all that.”

  Jess blinked at her. “What the hell?” she said. “They make you super smart and then get mad when you are?”

  Dev smiled wryly. “Doctor Dan did that. I’m not entirely sure everyone knew,” she admitted. “He told me once, when I wanted to ask some questions about programming, that it was okay for me to ask him anything, but not my regular proctors.” She adjusted their course. “He said it would cause them discomfort.”

  Jess felt slightly enlightened. “You really are different,” she mused. “NM-Dev.”

  Dev was about to answer when the scanner alerted, and she focused on the screens, since the forward shield was awash with rain. “There are people ahead,” she said. “Some kind of conflict.”

  Jess got up and went to her station, stripping off the pullover and hanging it over the back shelf, then exchanging the trousers she had on for a jumpsuit from the hatch against the back wall. She seated herself and belted in, then pulled her screens closer. “Give me some juice.”

  Dev shunted power to the weapons and activated the boards behind her, adjusting their course to approach and trimming the engines. The scanner showed use of energy weapons, and she boosted the power on the shields in case someone decided to direct them at the carrier.

  She studied the wiremap coming back. “Jess, here is the outline.” She sent the image back.

  “Nomads,” Jess said, after a brief pause. “Looks like a wagon train on the road.” She scanned the energy pattern. “Someone’s shooting at them. Turn on the recorders, let’s fly over again and get a capture before we move on.”

  “Aren’t we going to assist them?” Dev asked.

  “No. Not our business,” Jess responded briskly. “Just want to gather some intel.” She looked up after a relatively long period of silence greeted her words to see Dev watching her in the reflector, a studiously noncommittal expression on her face.

  She knew what that meant. She knew Dev well enough by now, after four months of service together, to know that she wanted to stop and help everything in her path, including limping starfish, and therefore thought Jess should do it, too.

  Wasn’t in the cards. Wasn’t her gig. She met Dev’s eyes in the reflector. Interforce wasn’t a rescue service.

  She drummed her fingers on the weapons console, wrenching her gaze from her partner’s with some effort and studying the wiremap instead. “Must have been the group we overflew earlier,” she said.

  “They appeared to recognize this vehicle as we went over them,” Dev offered. “Could they be part of April’s family?”

  Possible, not likely. Carriers were extremely distinctive lumps of metal and it would have been smart for anyone traveling to make note of them. She didn’t even know what tribe April had come from, never thought to check, didn’t actually care.

  Didn’t matter, after all.

  “I wonder if they might have heard about the plants?” Dev said.

  Jess tried not to smile, but after a moment, she gave up. “You’re a sneaky little bugger, Devvie.” She sighed. “Okay, take us down and let’s see who they are.” She pulled down her targeting rigs and got her hands into the trigger gloves.

  The carrier responded immediately, as they went into a dive and she felt the grav on her, watching the scope as it showed them heading groundward at a slightly alarming pace. She tapped comms. “Tac two on?”

  Almost immediately Doug’s voice came back. “Tac one, Tac two on station.”

  “Mark loc,” Jess said.

  “Marked.” Doug said.

  April’s voice cut in. “Ops?”

  “Jess, one minute,” Dev said.

  “Ack,” Jess said into comms, then disconnected and got herself ready, watching the wiremap change to visual with enough clarity for her to identify what she was looking at. “Standby for targeting.” She identified the blaster sources from a rocky outcropping off the flat surface that was once a road.

  The nomad train, which it was, had their vehicles in a square and themselves inside it, firing back with hand weapons.

  Their attackers were using long range blasters, much higher power, and as she watched, they took out the side of one of the cargo wagons, sending it in pieces up into the air. “Get between them and the nomads, Dev.”

  “Yes.” Dev sounded happy.

  “Let’s hope they have no limping starfish.”

  “Um...what?”

  “FASTER.” APRIL WAS in her rig, thigh muscle jumping as she watched the screen, anticipating the fight to come. Doug was in the pilot’s seat, giving the throttles a nudge as they shot between two craggy ridges and closed in on Jess’s last position.

  “Not too fast, boss.” Doug had his eyes glued to the scan. “Last thing I want is to come around a corner and find Rocket coming right at us.”

  “Boards’ll pick them up,” April said.

  “Want to make book on that?” he responded. “Or that my rookie self can outfly her?”

  April grunted as an answer, acknowledging the thought. She’d sim’d pretty much every single flight and fight scenario comp had come up with, but nothing quite
matched the way Dev flew, they hadn’t been updated yet to accommodate her space born acrobatics.

  Crazy weird. After the run over to the other side, they’d learned to keep well clear of their airspace and never to assume the bio alt would react as per the sims.

  Never.

  Dangerous, to anyone in the area, and on top of that she had hair trigger Drake on the guns, who apparently didn’t have to think before shooting and trusted her instincts as to who was friend and who was enemy.

  April thought that the outline of her carrier would mark them as friendly, but you never knew. “Time?”

  “Two minutes.” Doug adjusted the pitch and moved a bit forward, getting his boots on the side thruster pedals and adjusting his grip on the throttles.

  It was raining, and misty, the clouds descending down between the hills and making visual almost useless. He depended on the scan, and now, ninety seconds out, he got wiremap and picked up Rocket’s motion ahead of them. “There they are.”

  A ripple of energy went through the boards as April brought her guns live.

  “They’ve got target.” Doug saw the blaster flare and adjusted their trajectory to arc in the same motion, leveling and dipping toward the ground. “That escarpment, to the left. Big energy.”

  “Got it.” April was aware of the road, and the outline of the caravan, but she disregarded it, assuming that Jess had defined friend and enemy accurately, and they weren’t about to get shot in the ass.

  Always a possibility though. “Watch our rear shields.”

  “Bumped.”

  Doug held his throttles ready, concentrating on the other carrier that was heading toward the rocks at top speed. The enemy fire had come off the road and was focused on Dev’s machine, the forward shields splashing diverted energy to either side.

  Dev had her hard shield down and was flying blind, just on her scan. Doug shivered a little, glad they were on a vector and not yet being targeted so he didn’t have to do the same. April was used to targeting on the boards, but he didn’t like not having true vision out the front.