A Plain Jane Book One (22 page)

Yet despite how good the
implant was, she would need help. The damn thing left her confused.
She couldn’t even hear the word Para, for crying out loud. It the
implant managed to whisk her off the station and out into deep
space, it would leave Jane alone and with no idea what was
happening to her.

Priya finally looked up and her
expression was humbled, but humbled in a determined way. Priya did
everything in a determined way. ‘I have never seen a hack like
this,’ she conceded.

Lucas forced a breath through
his clenched teeth. ‘Trust me, I have seen things today that put
this hack to shame. It certainly doesn't surprise me. That
creature, Specimen 14, is capable of . . . ’ he
couldn’t finish his sentence. He swiveled to stare at Jane,
checking to see if she would react to the mention of the
Darq.

She just lay there. She
didn’t clutch a hand to her head or start screaming at him to shut
up. At least now she had turned to face him though. And he could
see from the interest in her eyes that she was okay, or at least a
measure of okay.

‘
I don't understand, Lucas,’
Priya admitted. ‘What kind of—’

‘
Just drop the containment
field,’ Lucas jumped in, setting his priorities. Yes, he was
setting his own priorities here, he was not waiting for other
people to do it for him. ‘Let her out, for god's sake.’ And do not
play with that implant, he added to himself.

Priya pressed her lips
together and looked up at him. She’d always had the prettiest eyes:
large, dark, and rimmed with long eyelashes. It was easily the
first feature he’d noticed when he’d met her, and probably the last
thing he’d seen when she’d glared at him and thrown a glass right
at his head.

Now her eyes blinked,
confusion obvious
. ‘But
there is some kind of implant, we scanned it, we know it's there,
it's of—’

Lucas quickly put up a hand and
made a cutting motion. While he seriously wanted to know everything
he could about the implant, he also knew the cost of discussing it
in front of Jane. ‘Later,’ he mouthed to Priya.

Though she gave him a very
confused look, she eventually nodded. Then she straightened
up.

‘
Take off the containment field,
but, at least keep a security field separating her from us,’ she
told the other scientist in the room. She turned back to Lucas.
‘I'll grant you that the message we received was a hack, but I'm
still going standard operating procedure on this. I'm keeping a
security field around her until we know what's going on
here.’

Though it irritated the
hell out of him, he managed a curt nod. After all, reducing from a
containment field to a security field was still a damn good thing.
At least Jane could no longer be disintegrated at the press of a
single button.

Lucas sighed heavily. He
was suddenly very aware of the fact he hadn't slept in days now.
Not for the first time he became jealous that Jane could sleep
while she was awake. Though, the more he thought about it, the more
he wondered whether that had something to do with the implant. They
had no real idea what it did, other than try to keep her safe,
quiet, and out of trouble like an overly protective parent that had
somehow gotten into her brain.

There was a lot to find
out. And Lucas wasn’t going to stop until he understood
everything.

‘
Look, she should be okay here,’
he glanced back at Jane and nodded low at her, hoping she
understood his assurance was more for her than anyone else. Then he
turned back to Priya. ‘Come with me and discuss it with the
Director. Please, Priya,’ he added in a soft voice.

Priya sighed and nodded. Then
she turned to the other scientist. ‘Keep an eye on her, and if
anything happens, and I do mean anything, you contact me. You have
the authority,’ she let her eyes dart back to Lucas, ‘to upgrade
the security field. But if it comes to it, I want you to check-in
before you upgrade it to a containment field. You
understand?’

The other scientist nodded
his head. Lucas felt incredibly sorry for the guy. Not only was he
probably confused out of his skull by what was going on with Jane,
but he had to work with Priya. In fact, worse than that, Priya was
his boss. Some people were just born unlucky. Then again, Lucas had
dated her, so who was he to talk?

‘
Don’t mention the,’ Lucas shook
his head sharply, trying to make meaningful eye contact with the
other scientist.

The guy nodded. ‘Got it.’ He
turned back to his console, an obvious mix of surprise and
confusion still plastered over his face.

‘
Lucas, you better be right about
this. Or—’ Priya began as she led the way out of the
room.

‘
You will throw a glass at my
head?’ he asked pointedly.

‘
Oh, don't be a baby. I knew you
had armor on. I knew it wouldn't hurt your precious little face,’
she snapped.

‘
I see you have been working on
your people skills,’ Lucas snapped back.

‘
I see you are still running
about with ridiculous notions, trying to save the Galaxy not from
any danger but from your own stupidity.’ Priya replied as she
stalked off down the corridor.

‘
Thank you for that, Priya,’
Lucas said quietly. To be honest, he could go toe to toe with Priya
quite easily, but he didn't have the energy. He was tired, and
there was too much going on. He didn't want to waste any breath on
arguing with her; he needed everything he had to convince both her
and the Director that they had to protect Jane as best they
could.

‘
Where did you find her, anyway?’
Priya asked, and she glanced sideways at him, a very careful look
in her eyes.

Jealousy? Could the great
Priya be jealous? He doubted it, as she spent most of her time
berating him. Yet there was a certain look in her eyes
nonetheless.

‘
She works at the Galactic
Force,’ he eventually answered.

‘
Recruit? A scientist?’ Priya
asked quickly.

‘
Works in admin actually,’ Lucas
matched pace easily beside her, and fought the urge to just push
his armor and sprint all the way back to the Director's office. He
wanted to get this sorted as soon as he could so Jane could get out
of that damn security field.

Priya snorted. ‘You never had a
sense of humor, Lucas, so please don't pretend you have one now.
Who is she?’

He just laughed, and it was an
unhappy laugh. ‘I am telling the truth. But you want more? I don't
really know. I think she is Paran, but that's about it. I can't
confirm it.’

‘
Paran?’ Priya's expression
suddenly became interested, but it still had that haughty touch of
determination. ‘She doesn't look anything like a Paran.’

‘
You know most Parans undergo
extensive genetic surgery. And we really don't know what the full
effect of that implant is either.’

‘
What is that implant?’ Priya now
looked incredibly interested.

Lucas glanced sideways at
her. Suffice to say, he didn't like that glint in her eye. Priya
was excellent at what she did. She was the Chief Scientist at the
Central Shipyards because she was the kind of woman who would not
compromise on quality, and would chase down developments in
research like a wolf chasing down her prey. That also meant that
when it came to morals, sometimes they didn't exactly see eye to
eye. He’d had this argument with her many times. She seemed to
think that technological advancement, no matter what it cost the
few, was worth it if it could benefit the many. Lucas, on the other
hand, thought that without the few there would be no many. If you
backed an indiscriminate policy that enabled you to impinge on the
rights of the individual as long as everybody else thought they
could benefit from it, then what was the point of having morals?
All you needed to ensure your decision was right was a formula and
a cold calculating heart.

Yet he didn't want to get
into those kind of heavy moral issues right now. Instead he drummed
his fingers on his leg and tried to think about how much to tell
her.

‘
You always do that when you are
about to lie,’ Priya pointed out as she threw her head back and
flicked her hair.

‘
Of course I do,’ he said
drolly.

Before their spat could
continue, they finally reached the Director's office. Priya nodded
at the two security guards outside, and though they gave Lucas
quite long and pointed glances, they moved to the side. Perhaps
they thought he was muscling in on their turf. Well Lucas didn't
care. One of the great things about having a blue line down his
armor meant that he rarely had to care. He outranked them, and
though ranks usually didn't mean a great deal to him, he now walked
right past them, head held high.

It had taken some doing to
get the Director to believe him. Lucas had even slammed a hand down
on the table, and had pointed out exactly how serious it would be
for the Director to make the serious mistake of acting on a
Galactic Force transmission that turned out to be fake. There were
many checks and balances in the communication system to ensure that
people could, if they paid attention, find a fraudulent message.
Sure enough, when Lucas had looked, all of the right flags had been
raised: it was clear the original message regarding Jane was
bogus.

Thankfully
the Director had given Lucas
the all-clear to stop Priya, or at least negotiate with
her.

The Director wasn't human,
he was from a race that resembled extremely tall stick insects. As
Lucas and Priya entered the room, the Director rose from his
chair.

‘
We have received several more
transmissions from Earth, directly from the Galactic Force, and all
of them . . . lack the correct watermark. They are
all fake transmissions,’ the Director acknowledged, his voice
clicking like two sticks hitting together in the wind.

Priya whistled. ‘What the hell
is happening down there?’

‘
What do the transmissions say?’
Lucas jumped in, his breath shallow.

‘
All of them say the same thing.
They tell us that the specimen Jane is dangerous, that it must be
destroyed, that it must not be allowed to go beyond this solar
system. They tell us that she is called Specimen 14, and that she
was found on one of the rim planets and brought to Earth for study.
They state she belongs to a mysterious and previously unknown race
with the ability to change their form at will.’

Lucas' mouth practically
hung open. The Darq had switched stories. It was now pretending
that Jane wasn't the mild-mannered administrative officer, but she
was in fact the Darq.

‘
But they lack the correct
codes,’ the Director clicked, bringing his hands up and moving them
over and over again in an obvious sign of worry for his race. ‘It
would be foolish to act on these transmissions as they lack the
correct codes, however . . . the cost of ignoring
them if they are correct—’

‘
Listen to yourself,’ Lucas
snapped, ‘they don't have the correct transmission codes. Somebody
has hacked into the Galactic Force's computers and they are
bombarding you with messages to kill . . . Jane. For
the love of god, don't do it.’

‘
But this
species . . . this species that Specimen 14 is meant
to be from—’ the Director began.

‘
The Darq, trust me, I saw a
Darq. I saw the real Specimen 14. Hell,’ Lucas now shut his eyes
for a brief moment and shook his head to the side, ‘I was one of
the people responsible for bringing it to Earth in the first place.
Not many people know this, Director, as it is strictly confidential
at this time. The real reason for the mission beyond Hell's Gates
is to study the Darq. Not that we knew what their name was back
when we planned it. For months now, even years, we’ve been
receiving sketchy intel of a race right at the rim, right past
Hell's Gate. We’ve dug up some strange things on some of the rim
planets . . . ’ Lucas swallowed hard, ‘Specimen
14 was one of those things. The Union Senate decided that it could
not simply wait around to see whether this mysterious race would
materialize and turn out to be a threat. It decided to mount a
mission beyond Hell's Gate to find out what is out there. That was
the whole point of bringing Specimen 14 to Earth, to do some more
preliminary studies before we set out on the mission. Now, listen
to me, I saw a Darq, and Jane is not one of them,’ he articulated
every single word, slowed it down, moved his mouth precisely to
form each sound. He needed to be heard on this one.

‘
Not a Darq,’ the Director
repeated.

Priya took a heavy breath. ‘But
what do we do? We need to contact the Galactic Force—’

‘
Tell them you killed her,’ Lucas
interrupted, the thought popping into his mind. ‘Tell them you have
disintegrated her. Tell them that you followed their orders
exactly, and you destroyed Specimen 14.’

‘
What?’ Priya's eyebrows crumpled
and she looked halfway between confused and very angry. ‘Lying to
the Galactic Force—’

‘
Look, whoever is sending you
these messages is going to be the one that picks up your response.
Now lie to it. Tell it exactly what it wants to hear. That you have
killed Jane.’