A Plain Jane Book One (3 page)

Fun was nowhere on his
mind right now however.

‘
That thing is meant to be dead,’
he said slowly, crossing his arms, the move easy despite the bulk
of his armor.

‘
Well it is still dead,’ Alex
replied at once.

‘
I just saw it move, Alex,’ Lucas
snapped, tone tense. He knew at some level that he should relax,
that Alex was right, and the containment field was back in place,
nothing was damaged, and nothing had really happened. However,
Lucas couldn't shake the feeling that this was important. Hell,
ever since he’d been given this command, he couldn't shake the
feeling that every single detail was the most important thing he
would ever do. He was hardly sleeping at night because he would
spend every minute of every day going over the troop manifest, the
personnel list, the supplies, even the programs that were to be
loaded on the computer. Every detail, every hour of every day: he
was already living his mission non-stop and it hadn't even started
yet.

‘
It could have simply been a
fluctuation in the power grid,’ Alex said, his voice calm and
reasonable.

‘
I swear I saw it move,’ Lucas
said again, this time through a sigh.

‘
And, I am pretty sure you
haven't slept in the past 48 hours,’ Alex raised an eyebrow as he
popped his head up from staring at the computer panel. ‘As I am
soon to be your Chief Medical Officer, let me tell you that’s not a
good look.’

‘
Soon
to be Chief Medical Officer,
Alex. I think you will find I am fine and that I look great,’ Lucas
added with a chuckle.

Alex put his hands up. ‘Far be
it from me to say that the great Lucas Stone doesn't look
fantastic. What exactly would the good Senator's daughter
say?’

‘
Don't bring that up again,’
Lucas warned, though his tone was playful.

Perhaps Alex was right,
perhaps he was just tired and he’d imagined the whole thing.
Because now that Lucas had his armor on and he had access to the
on-board computer and his augmented senses, he couldn't deny that
there really was no evidence that the specimen had moved a
nanometer, let alone an inch.

Lucas let out another
massive sigh, finally letting his armor melt back into his
implants.

‘
I'm telling you, you need to get
some rest,’ Alex waggled his finger. ‘Our friend can wait, after
all, he has waited for the past 100 years, I really don't think
he’s going to mind if you take the night off.’

‘
Right,’ Lucas
managed.

‘
Really, that is your comeback? I
thought the great Lucas Stone was meant to be charming and witty?
You call that witty?’ Alex smiled.

‘
Knock it off.’ Lucas put a hand
up to his brow and started to massage it, letting his eyes close
for a thankful, blissful moment. ‘I just don't want anything to go
wrong; this is probably the most important mission I will ever go
on.’

Alex shrugged. ‘Why would
anything go wrong? You will have the best team, the best ship, and
the best leader: you.’

Lucas rolled his eyes. He
knew Alex was just teasing him, but it was fair to say Lucas was
starting to get fed up with all the attention. Lieutenant Saber had
run up to him only last week to let him know that there was going
to be a documentary series on Lucas' life that was going to run on
all the major Galactic news channels before the mission. That, on
top of the fact that he’d learned only the month before that he had
a fan club with a subscription of over 1 million Galactic citizens.
It was all too much. In fact, Alex had told him yesterday that
there were some people on the moons of the Dia system that now
worshiped Lucas as a god.

Lucas hated it. He had
never done this for the attention; despite what everybody liked to
believe, he hated attention. It had never been about that, it had
always been about something more. Though the Galactic media liked
to think he did it all because he was some kind of hero, they were
wrong. He just always found himself the only person around when
trouble erupted, and it always seemed to be up to him to solve it.
He didn't seek it out, he just found himself having to face it
alone. Prack, sometimes he thought he was cursed. The number of
transports or cruisers or battleships that he’d been on that had
faced terrible crashes, or some dastardly plot that only he could
solve – it just wasn't normal. Or maybe it was normal, and other
people were doing just what he was doing but they weren't getting
the attention for it.

Now that was something
that kept Lucas up at night. He had a whole Galaxy telling him that
he was the bee's knees, at the prime of his game, the absolute
perfect man for the job. But what if he wasn't? What if he’d always
simply been lucky? What if there was somebody out there, or
millions and billions of people, that could do the job better than
him?

He knew he was tired and
that he was thinking negatively, but Lucas also knew that he wasn't
going to get any less tired. For the next several weeks he would be
planning the mission, and then for the next several months he would
be implementing it. As everybody kept telling him, it would be the
most important operation of his life, and perhaps the most
important mission mounted by the entire Galaxy in the past 100
years.

Lucas swallowed hard and
massaged his brow again.

That wasn't the worst
part.

The worst part was in the
containment field two meters to his left.

That was the real reason
they were heading through Hell's Gate. It wasn't to study quantum
singularities. It wasn't to study the planets beyond the rim. Oh
no, it was all about that thing two meters to his left.

‘
Look, Lucas, just go home. There
is nothing more you can do here tonight. I'm running the tests, but
I really don't need you to stand there and look sullen. Go home and
stand in your own house and look sullen,’ Alex kept on shaking his
head as he looked up from his console. ‘If you keep on staying up
all night and pouring over all of that data, you will find the
mission very short indeed, because I will call you up and send you
home the second we get out of space dock.’

Lucas looked up from under
his hand.

‘
Go home’ Alex mouthed
again.

Lucas finally shrugged. ‘Fine,
fine, but I don't want to run any risks, so have the computer
triple the containment field.’

Alex gave an impressed whistle.
‘Triple the field? That is going to be a mighty drain on power.
Lucky you are Lucas Stone, or you would be getting dragged up
before the Chief Engineer in the morning.’

Lucas replied with another
massive sigh, turned on his heel and walked out the
door.

Alex was right; he really
needed sleep, but then again, the Galaxy really needed him to pull
this mission off. If he didn't . . . hell, he had no
idea what would happen. Because that was the
thing . . . there was much more to this mission than
the public were being told. Of course there was more to it. The
powers that be would not fund such an enormous operation if all
they really wanted to do was have a look at a couple of swirly
whirly twisting space oddities.

It had to do with
them
. Those
things they had been finding. The strange, peculiar, frightening
things that had been popping up throughout that area of space for
the past 50 years. Nearly every day they would find new samples,
new signals, new artifacts that hinted at something far darker, far
more menacing that a bunch of quantum
singularities.

Now
that
was why Lucas Stone was going on this mission, and
that was why he was populating his team with more than
scientists.

He was aware that his
thoughts were rambling; he was so damn tired. He clamped another
hand on his temple and tried to push the fatigue and worry out. It
wouldn't work, but it at least it would distract him. Plus, he had
every intention of ignoring Alex's demand. He was going home, not
to sleep, but to do more study. Lucas would not go on this mission,
with so much at stake, without knowing exactly what he was up
against.

Lucas didn't live far out
of town. While nearly everyone else he knew chose to live in the
city, in one of the beautifully-appointed apartments full to the
brim with modern technology, he chose to live outside. He had a
very rustic-style house from almost 300 years ago out in the
country. It was an old, but well-preserved, log cabin, and it had
something that nobody seemed to talk about any more: charm. When
Lucas had been growing up with his grandfather, he’d learned the
importance of charm. The future could bring you every technological
advantage that you could imagine – it could bring you convenience
beyond your wildest dreams, it could open up your abilities and
your mind to frontiers that humans had once thought impossible –
but it couldn't give you charm. Waking up in the morning to see the
sunrise from an old log cabin in an old-style bed had a hell of a
lot of charm. Lucas had been nearly everywhere you could go in this
Galaxy and he had never found charm like that anywhere else. So
though it set him apart from his friends and colleagues, he lived
outside the city. He knew he was probably the only one who did so
in the entire Galactic Force. When he’d been going through his
studies, his friends had labeled him a Luddite and a technophobe,
but he wasn't. He simply had different priorities.

It would definitely be
something he would miss on the mission, as he was well aware it was
scheduled to take several months. Scheduled, that was. If they
really did find whatever mysterious race was out there,
then . . . god, he had no idea. He just hoped it
wouldn’t come to war.

Lucas realized he was
walking in a daze, and was on automatic pilot as he half jogged
across the Galactic Force grounds towards the nearest transport
hub. There was a report on recent archaeological activity close to
the rim that he hoped would give him valuable insight on what was
out there. He had every intention of ignoring Alex's advice and
forgoing sleep for study. And there was a lot to study. Hell, these
days he was reading anything that had any relation to that area of
space, even if it was just a comet count, or some boring and dry
assessment on the mineralogical survey of nearby moons and
planets.

Lucas walked along paying
just the bare minimum attention to his body and surroundings so
that he didn't fall over or trip into a bush. In fact, he was in
such a daze that it took a while to realize there was a strange hum
in the air. This close to the transport hub there was always a low
vibration to be heard. Yet the hum he was detecting was a higher,
discordant pitch. When he finally looked up, eyebrows pressed down
in confusion, he saw something else.

That was when he
ran.

Jane

It happened too fast for
her to react. One minute she was walking towards the transport hub,
the next something had flown at her from out of the shadows,
pressing into her shoulders and pushing her to the ground in a
snap. She didn't scream; the thing was on top of her chest and
pressing down on her lungs in an instant, and she just didn't have
the breath.

The thing, whatever it
was, pulled back its lips and let out a sharp and intense hiss. Out
of the corner of Jane's eye she saw something like a tail with a
very sharp and pointed end whip around from the side. It came
around with such a frightful speed, and in a single instant Jane
saw light from the nearby transport hub glinting off it.

Then it shot towards her.
As it did, her mind, far from filling with fear, filled with a
heavy, charged energy.

There was a buzzing in her
head, a buzzing that vibrated through her whole skull.

It didn't matter though;
the tail was milliseconds from stabbing right through
her.

Before it could strike,
something slammed into the side of whatever creature was on top of
her, and she heard a considerable grunt as it was pulled to the
side.

Shaking, blinking wildly,
her breath now coming in short and sharp bursts, she stumbled to
her feet, and as she did the buzzing in her mind started to abate,
finally leveling out and disappearing behind the wall of fear that
now pressed in on her from every side. She could see a security
officer in full armor, she could discern him because of the
distinct blue and white lines down his shoulder which glowed in the
dark. Whatever he was fighting was completely black, completely
light-less.

It was over quickly, and
in just a few seconds, the security officer snapped up, grabbing
his hand to the side and latching it onto the same tail that had
almost killed Jane only moments before. He tugged on it, then
pulled a pulse rifle from his back holster and shot the
thing.

. . . .It was
over.

It had barely lasted for
30 seconds. Yet now it was over.

But what was over? What on
Earth had just happened?

‘
Are you okay? Are you okay,
ma'am?’ The soldier in question now straightened up, but still kept
his rifle trained on the strange black shape before him. His head
was half-turned towards her but she could not tell his expression,
as his face was completely covered by the dark black of his helmet
and visor.