A Plain Jane Book One (34 page)

Lucas grated his teeth together
quietly. It was something to do with the term ‘weeded’.

‘
I see you are confused, let me
explain. We have always been a . . . secretive race,
Mr. Stone, and when our home-planets were overrun, those of us who
survived found that we had to integrate with the rest of the Galaxy
in order to live on. And it is forbidden in our culture to reveal
our features to an outsider. So in becoming refugees, Mr. Stone, in
becoming drifters, we naturally had to adapt our appearances. Each
of us, as we went our separate ways, adapted to whatever race we
found ourselves living with.’

‘
That's why she looks like a
human,’ Lucas confirmed something he’d suspected
already.

The Endurian, or Paran, or
whatever it was, nodded his head low. ‘Your friend Jane would have
grown up on Earth, and naturally, she would have been adapted to
resemble your race.’

Though Lucas was keen on
hearing the rest of the story, because he seriously needed to know
what the hell was going on here, he couldn't deny that a part of
him felt sickened by one simple phrase: she had been adapted to.
She had not adapted herself, and she had not chosen to change, no,
she had been adapted to. Yet Lucas did not say anything, he simply
waited.

‘
I am Endurian, your friend is
Human,’ the Endurian repeated.

‘
But who is she? What is that
thing, the Darq, and why is it after her? Is it just because she's
Paran and she happened to be close by when it woke up?’

The Endurian did not
answer for a moment, and in fact, looked at him, its black eyes
blinking again. Lucas now realized that he’d been correct, and that
Endurians did not blink, but the man sitting in front of him was
not an Endurian.

He was Paran, or at least
that was what he was telling Lucas.

And
so was Jane.

‘
Why is it after her? How do we
stop it? How do we kill it?’ Lucas now sat forward in his chair,
his movement tense and quick.

T
hat was when the Endurian flicked his head
to the side, and looked Lucas' armor up and down. ‘Why don't you
tell me? I have learned, no, I sense, that stored within your armor
is a living Paran database.’ It blinked its eyes feverishly
again.

Lucas leaned back and narrowed
his eyes. ‘You can sense that?’

The Endurian nodded his head
emphatically. ‘All Parans can sense our own technology, and only
Parans can operate it. If you allow me, I may be able to help you
access the information you now store. Make sense of it, try to find
out how to destroy the Darq.’ The Endurian now stood.

Lucas didn't, in fact, he
receded in his chair a little.

He couldn't put his finger
on it, but something didn't feel right, and he had the distinct
feeling that the Endurian or Paran in front of him wasn’t all he
was cracked up to be.

Yet
Lucas didn't do anything, he just sat
there, locked his teeth together, and watched
carefully.

‘
If only you allow me to help
you, I will be able to decode the information stored in the Paran
database,’ the Endurian now walked around the desk until he was
facing Lucas.

Lucas finally stood. ‘How are
those security measures going? Have they found Jane yet?’ This
Endurian obviously didn’t get it; right now Lucas didn’t care about
the Paran database, he just wanted Jane back. This talk could
wait.

The Endurian ticked his head to
the side, blinked rapidly, and then faced Lucas again. ‘I am sure
everything is fine, and soon Jane will be found, but while we wait,
we must make the most of this opportunity. Believe me, the
information that is now stored in your database could help you,
could help us win this war.’

Though Lucas held his position,
he got the distinct urge to take a step back from the Endurian, but
instead he simply let his expression crumple. ‘Look, shouldn’t Jane
be our priority now?’

‘
There is a war coming, and we
must prepare,’ the Endurian snapped, as if he were angry that Lucas
had even asked the question. Then he gave a breath and a distinctly
faked smile crossed his lips. ‘Now, Mister Stone, we must act
quickly. Allow me access to your database, give me a direct uplink
to your armor. I will download the information to my personal
computer.’

‘
I know this is important, but it
isn't my priority now,’ Lucas replied, keeping his eyes on the
Endurian the whole time, noting every single expression and every
single movement. ‘Right now I need to know that Jane is safe. So
right now I'm going to go find her,’ Lucas turned on his foot, and
headed for the door, except when he reached it, he bounced right
off a security field, his own armor crackling with energy as it
absorbed the electricity and redirected it through his feet and
into the floor until it was grounded. ‘What the hell?’ he snapped
quickly.

‘
These are standard security
procedures during an event such as this,’ the Endurian clarified.
‘Do not be alarmed, Mr. Stone.’

‘
Well you can turn these shields
off. I'm going to find Jane,’ Lucas stood right next to the
security field and waited for it to shut down.

‘
Mr. Stone, please, sit back
down,’ the Endurian tried again.

Lucas finally snapped;
he’d had enough of this. He had to find Jane, and that was honestly
the only thing he had to do. He certainly did not need to give the
Endurian access to the Paran database, or whatever it really
wanted. That could wait, the questions could wait, the war – if it
was even going to happen – could wait. Right now Jane was running
around Planet Gold with an assassin robot, and Lucas just couldn't
let that happen. He was going to find her, and well, do what Lucas
Stone did best: he was going to save her, probably whether she
liked it or not.

‘
Mr. Stone, I would have thought
that your loyalties should lie with your people, to the people of
the Galactic Union. I assure you that all security measures are in
place, and Jane will be found soon, without your help. If you have
any care for this Galaxy, for your Galactic Force, you will turn
around, sit back down, and give me access to your Paran database.
It is imperative that we have access to that information as soon as
we can,’ the Endurian’s voice was now curt and harsh, almost like a
whip.

Lucas turned around. ‘Shut down
the field,’ he pointed a gloved finger right at the Endurian, ‘and
that is an order. I am on official Galactic Force
business.’

‘
The Galactic Force? You have
every duty to the Galactic Force, Mr. Stone, you must give me
access,’ he tried again, now blinking so ferociously that Lucas
could hardly make out the blacks of his eyes.

Lucas ignored the man, turned
around, pulled out his gun, and shot several times into the
security field. A field like that would only take a single round of
blasts before it would fail. Yet it didn't. So Lucas kept on
slamming round after round into it, until he had shot a steady
pulse of almost one hundred blasts. The field still didn't falter
once. ‘What the hell? What’s going on here?’ he spat.

Lucas didn’t get a chance to
find out; in another second he lost control of his armor. He now
felt the familiar sensation of his armor locking into place around
him, his muscles no longer able to move within it, his mind trying
its hardest to relay order after order to his non-responsive living
membrane.

‘
It is unfortunate I have had to
take that step. But you are uncooperative. They assumed you would
be uncooperative. They hoped that you would understand, but they
were wrong,’ the Endurian spoke behind him, but Lucas couldn't
reply; even though he could scream all he wanted from inside the
confines of his armor, he couldn't make the words travel through
the toughened and hardened exoskeleton. Yet his helmet was still
set to transparent, and he could see the flickering field in front
of him, see his arms as they were locked in place, gun still
clutched in his hand, but with no capability of using
it.

‘
If you will not surrender the
information, we will take it,’ the Endurian pointed out in a voice
that told Lucas the alien was smiling through his words.

Lucas just stood there.
The Endurian was doing the seemingly impossible; it was hacking
Lucas’ armor.

‘
This is more difficult than we
would have expected, but given time, we will breakthrough. Mr.
Stone, it is unfortunate that you did not choose to help us. With
your help, this would have been quicker,’ the Endurian continued to
talk, this time its voice calm and even, as if it were simply
lightly admonishing somebody for being late for a party, not
telling a man forcibly trapped in his armor that it was very
disappointing that he hadn't chosen the bad side in the fight for
the Galaxy.

Inside his armor, Lucas
screamed and swore, shouting at the Endurian until his throat went
dry.

‘
Mr. Stone, I cannot hear you,’
the Endurian eventually pointed out. ‘I can see that your head is
moving around underneath your transparent helmet, and I imagine
that if I were to move in front of you, I may be able to make out
what you are saying by reading your lips. However, I have no care
to. I will repeat once more that it is a shame that you could not
find it in your heart to help us.’

Lucas didn't know what to do.
He didn't know how to help his armor, how to try to stop the hack.
Now he knew it was a hack, and it wasn't just his armor playing up
on him, Lucas panicked. He had precious seconds until the Endurian
gained complete control. This wasn’t meant to be able to happen
anymore. The Galaxy had spent 100 years perfecting bio armor so
this could not happen. It had learnt the lessons of the bad old
days, when soldiers had been hacked into, some external force
turning them against each other and finally themselves.

Y
et Lucas was still standing there, his
armor being hacked, moments away from losing control
completely.

‘
I must say it is very
complicated, but we are finally managing to break through the
defenses,’ the Endurian assured him. ‘We Krill are a resourceful
group.’

It was happening. Lucas was
losing control. All he could think of as he waited, on the edge of
something truly horrible, was Jane. Her name kept on popping into
his mind and swimming through his thoughts as he just stood there,
arms locked in position, body stiff. Where was she? Was she okay?
Had the assassin robot killed her by now? What if the security
forces of this planet were just as efficient as the Endurian had
led him to believe, and had already plucked her out of the water?
What exactly would the Endurian do to her? Whatever it was, Lucas
wouldn’t be able to stop it, as Lucas couldn't move, all he could
do was wait until the alien behind him managed to gain full control
of his armor . . . . He just had to
wait.

Jane, hang in there, he
thought one last time before the Endurian finally broke
through.

Chapter 21

Jane

She didn’t wake up on a
bed, she didn’t wake up on a ship. She woke up on an exposed launch
pad, a fiendish wind whipping around her, flattening her hair
against her face, chilling her skin. The sound of the ocean echoed
up from far below, and she could hear the searing blast of a plasma
rifle firing round after round at something, the sound of metal
crunching and blistering under each impact. She tried to press
herself up, tried to get to her knees at least, move her head
about, find out what was going on. After a while she realized she
was on the very top of a building, and she could see the dramatic
and almost frightening view of the ocean a kilometer below. Worse
than the view was the wind. It was horrendous; it roared at her, it
whistled, and it absolutely plastered her clothes against her
frigid skin.

Something wasn't right. She
kept on hearing that plasma rifle firing round after round at
something, while something else hissed, even yelped, the sound
quite metallic, quite artificial. In a snapped second, Jane saw a
chunk of metal whistle all the way over her head and over the side
of the building and down, down, down until it finally plunged into
the ocean below. Despite the distance, Jane still heard the
splash.

There was obviously no
shielding in place up here; this entire exposed roof had no railing
and no shielding, and Jane was lying so close to the edge, so close
that she had an unimpeded view of the ocean and the drop below. Her
body shaking from the fear of falling, carefully she shifted
herself backwards, her arms shuddering as she moved.

There was a searing blast
of heat, and a plasma shot slammed onto the floor beside her. She
screamed, threw her hands up and over her head, and huddled
down.

It was instinct, and it
was stupid; she was a sitting duck. Yet she couldn't make herself
move. With the Assister in her head momentarily off-line while it
regenerated, there was nothing to make her move either. Then
something twisted around her ankle and pulled her to the side, just
as another series of blasts slammed into where she’d been sitting.
Her hands scrambled against the smooth metal of the roof as she
slid across it, the force of the thing wrapped around her leg far
too strong to fight against. Eventually it let go, whipping past
her so fast it cracked like a whip. Jane followed the view, saw
that the tail belonged to Element 52, and then she saw Element 52
was fighting a security officer in full black armor with two
stripes down each of his shoulders, one white and one
blue.