A Plain Jane Book One (4 page)

Jane didn't answer him;
she just kept on standing there. She was aware that her mouth was
hanging open, her lips pouted, not in an attempt to look
attractive, but because she didn't seem to have any control over
them. Her gaze, though it did flicker up to the soldier, now locked
on the creature at his feet. She couldn't tear her eyes off the
strange black tail, the strange glinting, pointed tail that had
only moments before been ready to slice right through her chest. It
honestly felt as though her body had frozen in place, as if she had
no control over it whatsoever.

The buzzing was still in
her head, but the more she stared down at the creature, and the
more it remained still and lifeless at the soldier's feet, the more
it subsided.

Jane clutched a hand to
her chest, but she still did not answer the soldier, and she still
did not remove her gaze from that tail for even a
second.

‘
We need a security team here,’
the soldier said very quickly. He did not move or clutch a hand to
any kind of communication device. He just spoke. Though Jane had
never had the fortune of trying out one of the fancy bio mechanical
armor suits that all the security forces wore, she knew what was
happening here. They could connect to the wearer's motor and
sensory systems, wind right in there as if they were an extension
of the wearer's very body. They were controlled by thoughts alone.
So if the guy wanted to make a call, all he had to do was think
about it.

‘
Make it quick, we need a MAG
team as well,’ the soldier snapped out his words quickly and
efficiently, but did not once shift his gun: keeping it firmly and
unwaveringly pointed at the thing by his feet.

F
inally Jane began to shake. It was a
considerably delayed reaction, and she even let out a whimper. She
also wanted to scream, just open up her mouth and let loose with
her lungs, give the most high-pitched, rattling, and frightened
screech of her entire life.

‘
What the hell is this thing?’
the soldier asked, though his voice was low, his words directed
more at himself. ‘How did it get to Earth?’ There were long pauses
between his words as he no doubt accessed the on-board sensors of
his armor to scan the creature.

Jane of course did not
have that advantage, and the only thing she could use to gain
information on the now lifeless carcass that had almost killed her
was her sight. And she could not stop looking at it.

‘
Are you injured?’ the soldier
asked again. ‘Are you okay?’

Jane could hear the man
perfectly, and she also knew that she wasn't injured, but she still
did not answer. Things like this did not happen to Jane. She had a
simple, easy, almost mundane and imminently comfortable life. While
she was an outsider, Jane had never faced prejudice to the extent
that she’d been attacked, and had never feared it could happen to
her. In fact, in all of her life she’d never been in any danger.
She had never been thrust into a terrifying situation, she had
never been mugged, she had never been assaulted, she had never been
on a cruiser when it had lost power, she’d never even been
frightened by a bump in the night. Now, here she was sitting on the
ground, her palms pressed with dirt and mud, her black Galactic
Force skirt torn, staring at a creature that had almost killed
her.

‘
You work in the Administrative
Division, don't you?’ the soldier kept on trying to engage her in
conversation.

How did this man know
where she worked? It was just enough to break her out of the pall
of fear and surprise that she was currently drowning in, and she
finally flicked her eyes up to the man in front of her.

‘
I have seen you around, you have
been here for a while, right? What's your name?’ While he still had
his gun firmly pointed at the creature before him, and only half
turned to Jane as he spoke, it did appear that the note of concern
in his voice was genuine.

As Jane heard the sound of
heavy footsteps running over the Galactic Force grounds towards
them, and the sharp blare of a warning signal as a security field
was set in place around the building and grounds, she finally
picked up on the voice she was hearing. It was Lucas Stone. It had
to be. She knew that distinctive deep baritone.

Before she could ask him,
the security group had arrived, and the commotion began
anew.

Very soon Jane was whisked
away by a medical bot, even though she was plainly not injured. And
very soon, though perhaps not soon enough, she whispered out her
name. Jane. Though Lucas Stone was no longer there to hear
it.

Chapter 3

Lucas Stone

What in the hell had just
happened? He’d been walking across the Galactic Force grounds, only
to see something moving through the dark. His armor had activated
itself instantly. Even when it was not in place, it was still
intrinsically linked with his nervous system. When a part of his
brain, even if he wasn't conscious of it, felt impending danger,
the armor would activate itself.

He was bloody lucky it
had, because if it hadn't, he wouldn't have been able to move that
creature off her. It was fast, it was strong, and it was very much
illegal in nearly every single Galactic nation.

It was an assassin
robot . . . on Earth . . . . It
was a model he’d never come across before. Yet his biometric
readings had confirmed that it was indeed an assassin
robot.

Lucas knew that he had
been lucky too. He’d only defeated it through the element of
surprise. If the thing hadn’t been so consumed by attacking the
woman, it would have put up one hell of a fight. That was why
assassin robots were illegal; they were too fast, too strong, too
agile, too technologically advanced, and, hell, they were only
there to kill people.

They also regenerated, and
that was why Lucas had never taken his gun off the creature, though
he’d fought every instinct to run up to the woman to check that she
was okay. An assassin robot could regenerate even if only one tenth
of its synthetic tissue remained. You could chop it up, slice it in
half with a plasma ray, blow up most of it with a linear mine, but
as long as one tenth remained, it would regrow. Sure, it might take
a couple of hours, but soon enough the creature you’d lost half
your team to would be back on your tail.

Lucas had only ever fought
one once, and it wasn’t an experience he could forget. It’d been on
a planet far from Earth, one that was a hotbed of pirate activity.
It had certainly not been one of the most protected planets in the
Galactic Union.

‘
I don't get it, what was it
after?’ one of the security officers at the security station
asked.

‘
I have no idea,’ Lucas mumbled
to himself as he stood in the corner, arms crossed, gaze directed
to somewhere in the middle distance. He did not need this right
now. Weeks away from beginning his mission, he should be spending
every last second on picking the crew and consolidating his
plan.

He heaved a great sigh and
shook his head several times, finally letting it rest back on the
wall behind him. ‘Any news from the med bay?’

The security officer
shrugged in a dismissive way. It was clear that was not where his
priorities lay. In a way, Lucas could not blame him. If you were in
charge of security at the Galactic Force, and one of the most
illegal and highly trained killers in the universe had violated
your grounds and attacked one of your staff, it should command your
full and total attention. The blowback from this would be
extraordinary.

‘
Are we sure we have got it
contained?’ Lucas asked, shifting his eyes towards the security
officer, but not shifting his head from the wall behind him. He was
tired, seriously tired. It hadn't just been the impromptu battle
with the fiend on his way home, it was everything. He was weary and
he was running out of time before he went on the most important
mission of his life, and the truth was, he didn't feel he was
ready.

‘
I am going to head up to the med
bay to see how that woman is. Ensure proper security protocols; I
don't want that thing getting out again,’ Lucas uncrossed his arms
and pulled himself away from the wall. He realized that he
technically did not need to be telling the security officer what to
do; Lucas was no longer in charge of Galactic Force security. The
security officer before him, though obviously completely surprised,
would still know his job. Hell, anybody who knew the slightest
thing about assassin robots would know what to do with them, and
they would certainly know not to leave the containment field open
while they went to get a coffee or a snack. But Lucas had to be
careful, he always had to be very careful. He couldn't afford
mistakes, because the whole Galaxy was relying on him.

His armor was still
engaged, and though he had let his helmet turn transparent, he
wasn't about to deactivate it. Too many surprises. First there’d
been the problem with the containment field in the basement, and
now a bona fide assassin robot had popped up on the grounds. Next
he would probably find a gang of space pirates dancing around in
the cafeteria, stealing all of the hotdogs, and destroying the
chairs and tables.

When he eventually made it
to the med bay, he didn't see the commotion that he’d expected. In
his mind, if someone had just had a fantastically close scrape with
an assassin robot, a team of physicians would be caring for them
around the clock. Lucas had seen what an assassin robot could do;
he’d lost two very good people to one. They were focused, they were
brutal, and they were entirely effective. While he’d seen the woman
sit up and even stand, it didn’t mean much. Because he knew another
thing or two about assassin-bots; they could put in place the kind
of interference fields that could send a person into a coma, or
completely scramble their endocrine and neurological systems,
killing them in an instant or shutting them down in a slow,
excruciating way.

Yet when he entered the
med bay, it was to the sight of the woman sitting up on the edge of
one of the beds, staring out the window to the night sky beyond.
There were several doctors around attending to other patients, but
they weren't all crowded around her ensuring her body did not shut
down.

The woman hardly glanced
at him as he walked past, her gaze fixed at the view outside. It
was the same look she’d given that creature after it had attacked
her. At first Lucas had put it down to shock, but now he noticed
there was a certain strange quality to her attention. Before he
could assess it further, one of the doctors walked over to him,
shaking her head and looking as though it had all been his
fault.

‘
Lucas,’ she said, voice curt as
she crossed her arms, a holographic data pad in her
hand.

‘
Miranda,’ he noted through a
swallow. Lucas had known Miranda ever since he’d been a new
recruit. And ever since Lucas had been a new recruit, Miranda had
always treated him in the same way: as a reckless individual who
needed her services far too often. She’d told him on more than one
occasion that she was thoroughly sick of fixing him up after
fights. Though Lucas would occasionally point out that he was
saving the Galaxy here, and she should cut him a bit of slack, she
never did.

Yet he liked Miranda; she was
one of the rare people out there that didn't treat him like a
walking god. Hell no, Miranda treated him like a walking
accident.

‘
I should have guessed that you
were involved in this,’ Miranda said as she raised a single
eyebrow, her head still shaking, and her expression obviously
conveying disappointment in him.

Lucas felt the need to put his
hands up in surrender. ‘It wasn't exactly my fault. I just
intervened. If I hadn't, we'd have a body bag instead.’ He let his
gaze shift back to the strange woman on the edge of the
bed.

While he didn’t know her
name, he’d seen her around. In fact, he could remember the very
first time he’d met her: as a recruit he'd asked her for
directions. She’d mumbled that it was her first day too, and she
had no idea where she was. The only reason that Lucas remembered
the interaction was because she’d been painfully cute about it.
There’d been something about the way she’d blinked at him, her lips
wobbling, that had stayed with him over the years, even though he’d
only rarely seen her since. Sure, he’d noticed her today in the
admin office when the general manager had made him give that really
awkward speech. While everybody else had been on their feet and
clapping, she’d been sitting down and staring out the window. And
yeah, he’d also noticed she’d been nodding off when he'd first
walked into the room.

Once a pleasant curiosity,
now she was an enigma. Because now she was sitting on a hospital
bed because she’d been attacked by the most illegal and dangerous
synthetic life form in the Galaxy.

Lucas glanced back at
Miranda, and he could tell she’d been looking at his expression the
entire time.

‘
A friend of yours?’ Miranda had
a very slight but suggestive smile on her face. ‘Should I be
calling the papers, or the very good Senator and his
daughter?’

He let out a small laugh and
shook his head. ‘What have you got for me, Miranda? And why aren't
you dealing with her?’ he nodded towards the woman. ‘I’ve seen what
one of those robots can do, and I know you don't just walk away
from that.’