A Plain Jane Book One (35 page)

Jane liked to think that she
knew quite a bit about Lucas Stone, even if most of it was built up
from dodgy documentaries and even dodgier fan supplements. Of that
knowledge, there was one fact Jane was sure of: Lucas Stone was
about the only security officer in the Galactic Force that had one
blue and one white stripe. In fact, the only officer to hold the
same rank with the same clearance and abilities was at least a full
five feet taller than Lucas. Which meant that the man that was now
tussling with Element 52 was Lucas Stone. And
Lucas . . . Lucas was shooting at her. Element 52
kept on getting in the way, kept on whipping its tail around and
slamming it right into Lucas' chest, trying to get him off the top
of the roof, trying to trip him up, trying to stop him in any way
it could. Yet Lucas would slam into Element 52 with the butt of his
rifle, shoot several rounds right into it, and then twist out of
its grip to attempt another shot Jane's way.

She stared at him. She stared
at Lucas. Because he was trying to kill
her . . . .

Her mouth open, her lips
cold, her eyes fixed in place on him, she managed to croak out his
name in a harsh, constricted, horribly surprised whisper before he
tried to shoot her again, this time one of the rounds from his
plasma rifle getting so close to her that it singed and burnt the
skin of her left arm. She let out a scream of pain, clutched a hand
to it, and shifted to the left, scuttling to the side like a crab.
He had no reaction to the fact she had screamed, and managed to get
off another round, but just in time Element 52's tail whipped
around and slammed into his wrist, shifting his aim, and protecting
Jane at the last moment.

She shook, her whole body
practically convulsing. He wasn't far from her now – the two of
them were grappling barely five meters from where she still sat,
her body limp and motionless from fright. It felt like he was
closer, it felt like she was right at his feet, looking up into his
helmet, unable to do anything, unable to make him stop.

As she kept watching him,
he tried to shoot her again. Element 52 got there first and whipped
out with his tail and pulled her to the side. She cried out in pain
as the arm that had been singed by the plasma shot grated roughly
over the metal of the roof as she was dragged along it.

‘
Hold on, Jane,’ it said. It was
not Lucas, it was Element 52. Lucas did not speak to her, did not
say word, just kept on trying to kill her.

Jane didn't have anything
to hold on to, as the roof was completely smooth and below was
nothing but an incredibly long drop into a certain and watery
death. She had nowhere to run either; she could not see where the
door was that would lead down from this roof, and she was hardly
about to merrily skip over to the edge to see if she couldn't find
a convenient window on her way down.

‘
It's coming, help is coming,’
Element 52 repeated, its voice pitching up and down in a now
familiar and almost comforting way. Yes, comforting, because right
now as Lucas Stone was trying to kill her all she had to rely on
was Element 52, an assassin robot.

Lucas broke away, slamming
his fist around in a fiendish punch, making it connect right with
the side of Element 52's head. The assassin robot stumbled
backwards, even teetered close to the edge of the roof. Then Lucas
raised his gun and slammed shot after shot right into the assassin
robot. It fell off the edge of the building: Element 52 dropped
right out of sight. He didn't scream, he didn't make a
sound.

Lucas turned to
her.

‘
No, Lucas, don't do it, don't do
it. I haven't done anything wrong. I'm not bad, Lucas. Don't do
it,’ she tried to plead with him as he walked slowly towards her,
raised his gun, and then clicked something on the side. Finally he
depressed his finger on the trigger. The muzzle of the gun began to
glow. It was building up a charge. It was obvious he intended to
make his next shot count, intended to make his next shot have the
force and power of one hundred rounds. It would likely blow an
incredible hole in the roof, let alone kill Jane. In fact, it would
likely disintegrate her.

She just shook her head.
‘Don't,’ she said finally as noise of the charging gun began to
build up and she could tell that the rifle was about to
fire.

She just closed her eyes,
squeezed them shut, and directed her face to the ground.

Then it fired.

Jane snapped her eyes
open; no, something else had fired. There was a ship behind her,
coming in to land, and it had fired right at Lucas using its
powerful gun turrets. It blasted him off the roof. One second he
was there, only a half meter from her as the charge picked up in
his gun, the next he was nowhere to be seen. Jane screamed and she
finally forced herself to her feet, and ran to the other side of
the roof. She flung herself to her knees when she reached it,
clutched her hands on the edge of the metal, pushed her body over,
and tried to see as much as she could. Eventually she saw a splash
far down below.

‘
Lucas
,’ she
screamed, but then someone started to pull her
back.

‘
We must escape, we must leave,
we must leave,’ they said.

She fought against their
grip as they pulled her backwards. She tried to stare down at the
ocean below, tried to get back to the edge of the roof.
‘
Lucas
,’ she
screamed again.

‘
Please hurry, Pala,’ they
finally slackened their grip on her wrist, but in another moment
they wrapped their strong arms around her middle, lifting her off
the ground and pulling her towards the spaceship that was now
hovering just at the edge of the roof.

She screamed for Lucas,
but Lucas didn't answer; how could he? He had just been shot off
the roof by the plasma turrets of a spaceship.

Lucas was dead, he had to
be.

Tears were streaming down
her cheeks and over her chin, but she didn't care. She just kept on
saying his name over and over again.

She was loaded onto the
ship, and then the ship took off. In minutes it was out of the
atmosphere. In barely an hour it had left the solar system. In days
it had left the quadrant.

END OF BOOK ONE

This story is continued in Book
Two, which is currently available.

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