Chapter 11
Jane
The hangar door opened in an instant, and she wasn’t expecting it. She’d thought she would have time. She’d assumed she would have to wait for Lucas to go over to the docking panel by the doors and use his armor to open it up. Yet they’d opened of their own accord.
Surprised by the suddenness of it all, Jane jumped with fright and, embarrassingly, actually tried to hide behind Lucas. He obviously noticed, because he shifted his head to the side and looked at her.
Hiding behind Lucas Stone… that wasn’t something Jane had ever thought she would be doing. Yet reality was contradicting her expectations here.
Jane felt a rush of exhilaration as the light from the hangar room outside filtered in and mixed with that of their ship. It sliced through her, blazing into her stomach and rushing down her back. She felt her breath quicken, her chest pumping up and down as she tried to hold herself still.
She was scared it would happen again. Not that she would be able to stop it if it did. If she got too frightened, wouldn’t it take control again? Whatever it was? The implant that Lucas had talked about? The one that was meant to be in her brain? Inside her actual brain?
Jane suddenly tipped her head to the side as a sharp slice of pain shot through her forehead, and she tried to squeeze her eyes against it until it stopped.
The implant.
The second she thought about it, was the second the pain returned, and she clutched at her face with her hand.
“Come on,” she heard Lucas say.
Jane didn’t move immediately.
She couldn’t see what was outside, because the light was too bright. For all she knew, there was a platoon of security forces, maybe even some security robots, perhaps some flying drones. God, they probably had an entire army out there considering what she’d done to the Galactic Force. She could hardly blame them; what she’d done was horrible and not the kind of act you encouraged by your administrative staff.
“Jane,” Lucas said softly, and yet again he held his hand out to her. She looked at it, and though she really wanted to grab it, she didn’t. Because he was Lucas Stone, right?
“Come on,” he tried again.
Finally, once again not taking his hand, she followed him out of the ship.
The view that met her was breathtaking, for more than one reason.
Jane had seen the hangar bays above the Galactic Force Main Campus before. She’d seen spaceships too, of course, even though she’d never been on one as it had left Earth’s atmosphere. Yet that didn’t prepare her for the sight of the Central Shipyards. They were huge, massive. In fact, she doubted she’d ever seen a structure so large. Though their reconnaissance vessel wasn’t that small, it was dwarfed by some of the ships that were docked beside it. Actual battlecruisers and long-range scientific vessels. They were the kind of ships that Jane had only ever seen on holoimages and never up close.
This was space, apparently, and Jane was starting to realize how little of it she’d seen.
There were also security guards. Galactic Force security guards.
There were about seven of them all lined up outside the door to their cruiser, all in jet-black armor just like Lucas’. They all had guns too, and they were all held fast in their grips, though currently they were pointed at the ground and not at her.
That didn’t stop Jane from starting to shake.
…
Lucas Stone
Lucas put his hands up, and he walked out. “We are on the same team, guys,” he said, voice careful.
“On the same team?” he heard someone snap from further down the corridor, and in a moment he realized that they were stalking toward him, having just arrived through one of the many linear lifts that serviced the main docking bay.
He knew that voice. He knew that walk too; it was Chief Scientist Priya.
As always, she looked fantastic. And, as always, she looked at him like he was one of the dirtiest scumbags in the entire universe. After all, they had a history. They had a history where he’d once dated Priya, and where it had ended, for all sorts of reasons, in a messy breakup.
There was a reason Lucas never liked to go to Central Shipyards, and that reason was Chief Scientist Priya.
He grimaced. Was there anything else that could go wrong? Was there any other thing in this Galaxy that could stuff up and get in his way today? Was this just a continuation of the curse that had been dogging him his entire life? Or would it end here? Would Priya grab one of the security officer’s rifles and just shoot him or chase him around the corridor, screaming at him as she tried to hit him on the head with the butt of the gun?
Priya glared at him, but then she let her gaze turn to Jane, and from the look on Priya’s face, Lucas could tell that she knew something about Jane. Whether it was the entire story or not, he knew that was why there were now seven armed security guards standing in front of them.
“I received a communiqué from Earth,” Priya snapped, returning her gaze to him. “Now, what the hell have you dragged in?”
Lucas twisted his jaw at that statement. It was one thing for Priya to hate him, and he probably deserved it on quite a few levels, but she didn’t have to be rude to Jane. Strangely, it was a quality he’d actually fancied in her to begin with. She’d always been willing to be direct and determined. Yet there was direct and there was determined, and then there was telling the frightened, confused woman behind him that she was the kind of thing that was “dragged in.”
“Priya, where is the Director?” Lucas straightened up and fought the urge to cross his arms.
“Are you trying to go over my head, Lucas? It wouldn’t be the first time.” She put her hands on her hips, staring out at him, her dark eyes flashing.
Lucas sighed through a laugh, but it wasn’t a happy laugh, and it wasn’t the kind of confused chuckle he’d been giving Jane all trip. No, it was an entirely frustrated move. “Look, listen to me, this situation—”
“Is out of your hands.” Priya kept her hands on her hips and glowered back at Jane.
“I’m sorry?” Lucas asked slowly, an obvious note of warning in his voice.
“The Director has given orders that she’s to be taken to a secure medical facility.”
“What?” Lucas asked again, that dangerous note of warning still hardening his tone, frustration starting to arch his back as he realized the situation was starting to go to hell.
“Don’t play cute, Lucas. We know what she did down at the Galactic Force,” Priya snapped.
Lucas was aware that Jane was slowly inching more and more behind him. He really couldn’t blame her. The kind of glare that Priya was giving Jane could cut through a sun. Plus, at least while Jane was acting docile and frightened she wasn’t running around high kicking security officers, stealing their guns, and hacking into systems. He couldn’t guarantee how long that would last, though.
“Look, I believe she has…” Lucas thought of what to say for a moment but then realized there was no way he could convey to Priya how stupid she was acting considering exactly what she was up against. Lucas shook his head. “She has some kind of implant, it can—”
Lucas heard Jane breathe suddenly and sharply behind him.
“If she has an implant, we will figure it out. She has to go to a secure medical facility.”
Lucas just clenched his teeth. “Look, Yaka—”
“Yaka hacked into the Galactic Force system to get you that ship. He bypassed all security rules. He even tried to obtain the Dean’s own clearances to get you that reconnaissance vessel. So I wouldn’t start talking about Yaka,” Priya snarled.
“Right,” Lucas said, tone dropping. He’d had enough of this. “You listen to me, I’m telling you that this situation is beyond what you have been told. We had a massive security incident on Earth, and it is of utmost importance that we deliver Jane to a secure facility, not because she’s a threat to us, but because—” Lucas was suddenly aware that Jane was starting to back of
f toward the reconnaissance ship. He turned sharply to her.
“Don’t move, don’t move,” the head of the security forces said.
“Jane,” Lucas tried to make eye contact with her. At the same time, he used his armor to scan her implant.
Jane shook her head, her ponytail whipping over her shoulder and back again.
“Just stun her,” Priya snapped.
Before Lucas could act, they’d already fired. And their aim was true; several stun blasts slammed right into Jane’s chest, and she doubled over in an instant.
Lucas snapped forward, threatening to double over himself as if he’d been the one shot. “What the—” he began, his voice bitter.
“Deliver her to a secure medical facility,” Priya said curtly, and then she turned on her heel. “Stone, you have to come with me. The Director wants to see you.”
He just stood there for a moment, and he was aware of where his gun was. Far too aware considering he was on the same team as everyone here. Yet he couldn’t wrench his eyes off Jane. She just lay there crumpled up, head lolled to the side, hair a mess over her face, shoulder, and arm.
The sight of it steeled him. Steeled him in an awful way. It plucked right at his spine. He used everything he had not to reach his hand around and grab at his own rifle to return fire.
“This situation is not what you think it is,” Priya snapped again and began to walk off, obviously not waiting for him to follow.
It took several gut-wrenching seconds, but finally Lucas turned to follow her.
He left Jane, left her right there on the floor.
Yet he promised himself that he wouldn’t be leaving her for long. He would go through the proper channels first, and he would try to convince the Director and Priya of what he was starting to realize. Jane was innocent, she was caught up in this mess, but she had to be protected, because dammit, she was important. But if the correct channels didn’t work, well then, Lucas Stone knew where his gun was. His Fan Club was about to find out that he didn’t always act within the law, not when something mattered to him.
…
Jane
She woke up on a medical bed, or at least she thought it was a medical bed. It was unusually hard. There was a heady crackling in the air too, and it felt as if her hair was standing on end. When she managed to open her eyes, she realized why: there was a glowing red containment field around her. An actual containment field.
Jane hadn’t had much to do with science and security in the past but did at least know the difference between a containment field and a security field, or at least she thought she did. A security field was simply used as a form of shielding or to block one thing off from another. A containment field, on the other hand, had a built-in feature: it could disintegrate what was inside. It was the kind of field you used when you caught hold of a specimen that you wanted to study, but the kind of specimen that was also dangerous and that you might have to, at any moment, dispose of for the good of everybody.
And Jane was now in a containment field. She understood what that meant.
She closed her eyes again, then opened them up, and the red glow of the containment field was still there.
She was aware that somebody off to her side, perhaps across the other side of the room, had mumbled something along the lines of “she’s awake.” She hoped they didn’t add, “let’s disintegrate her.” That didn’t stop Jane from biting heavily into her lip and letting a rush of fear flow through her.
Lucas had said that everything would be okay. He’d promised that once they got to the Central Shipyards, she would be fine. Well, okay, he hadn’t ever actually brought himself to say it, as he’d always trailed off. Now Jane could appreciate why. It wasn’t fine. She was now contained in some kind of medical lab, under the threat of disintegration, being treated like a dangerous and nasty specimen.
“Right, what kind of information do we have on the implant?” one of the voices at the other end of the room asked.
Implant. There was that word again. As soon as the person said it, another searing slice of pain shot through Jane’s head. She was really starting to hate that word.
“Sophisticated, seriously sophisticated,” somebody replied through a whistle, “haven’t ever seen anything like it. Looks Paran, though.”
At that word, Jane felt yet another shot of searing pain slice through her mind. She clutched both her hands either side of her head, trying to squeeze them together, as if she could make her skull smaller and thereby reduce the effect of her agony.
“Right. Continue analysis,” one of the other voices snapped.
In one of the many night-time fantasies Jane had entertained over the years, she’d once or twice imagined she was some kind of experiment, but then she’d always been saved in the nick of time by her handsome suitor. She opened one eye and looked around her, but she couldn’t see her handsome suitor.
Which made her think of Lucas. He was here, right? Yet where was he now? Had they taken him off to prison? She just couldn’t remember anything. They had shot her so quickly and then…. Where was he?
“It seems to have some kind of power source,” one of the scientists mumbled. “Extremely sophisticated.”
“How does it work? I want to do full scans on it,” the other scientist snapped.
While Jane couldn’t be sure, and though she could hardly muster the strength to roll over to check, she didn’t fancy that the voice belonged to the woman who’d stalked up to them in the hangar bay. The woman who had seemed to know Lucas. Now Jane paused to think, she realized she recognized her from one of Mandy’s fan supplements. Her name was Priya Lakesh, and she was a rising star in the field of mechanical science. According to the fan supplements, Lucas had dated her while he was a student.
Yet all of those facts were irrelevant. The only thing that Jane should be thinking about was that she was now in a containment field on Central Shipyards, waiting for the scientists to stop prodding her and end up disintegrating her instead.
Suddenly she felt something in her head. It was a hot, erratic, vibrating sensation.
“Ahh, we can’t scan that thing…. It’s… doing something to our scanners,” one of the scientists mumbled, his voice indistinct as he spoke quickly.
“What do you mean it’s interfering? That containment field is one way, it should not be able—” Priya snapped.
“It’s definitely interfering, or something is happening,” the other scientist said, voice high and scared now.
“We’ll shut it down. Increase the field,” Priya shouted.
“I’m trying to increase the field, but it’s not working,” the other scientist really did sound scared now.
Jane snapped her eyes open, stared at the ceiling, and noted the particular red hue of the containment field around her.
They were going to do it, weren’t they? They were going to disintegrate her. She clapped her hands over her face, screwed her eyes shut, and waited.
“If she’s getting into our systems, use the failsafe. Disintegrate—” Priya began.
“Like hell,” a far lower, far tighter, and far more recognizable voice growled. It was Lucas. “Just stop your scan. The implant is programmed to protect itself. Stop trying to scan it, and it will stop trying to interfere with your systems.”
“Lucas, get out of here, you don’t know what you’re—” Priya began.
“Of course I don’t know what I’m dealing with. I have had a Paran database uploaded into my armor, and I still don’t know what I’m talking about, ha? I was the one who actually saw what happened on Earth, and I still don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m overriding you.”
Soon there was a click, and slowly the buzzing, shifting feeling in Jane’s brain subsided.
She let out a massive, relieved breath of air, letting her arms fall loosely by her sides.
“She’s not a pracking lab rat, Priya,” Lucas snapped, and Jane had never heard that exact note of anger in his voice.
Perhaps
that wasn’t surprising, as Jane clearly didn’t know as much about Lucas as she’d thought. Everything she’d learned from those fan supplements had been wrong. The real Lucas Stone wasn’t the smile, the jaw, and the legend. The real Lucas was the only thing standing between her and disintegration.
“What the hell are you doing, Lucas? You have no right to come in here and tell me how to run my lab,” Priya screeched at him. “That thing in the containment field—”
“Is a person, not a thing,” Lucas snapped, his voice dangerously tight with anger.
Jane wanted to roll over to watch them, but she kept as still as she could, as if that would somehow make everybody forget she was there.
“Don’t snap at me, Lucas, I read that report, I know what she—” Priya began.
“It was a fraud. The report was wrong. It didn’t have the right Galactic Force watermark. It was faked. Trust me, Priya, because I was there.”
Faked? A fraudulent report? What was Lucas talking about? Technically, Priya was justified in acting the way she was. Jane had gone crazy on Earth, bolted from the planet, and had thrown up all over a command chair. She deserved to be contained, right?
“Listen to me, I’ve cleared it with the Director. We have ascertained that the signal you received was somehow implanted right into our system. It didn’t have the right codes embedded. It doesn’t line up with the live feed from my armor. It was a fake.”
Jane could hear somebody spluttering, and she concluded that it was Priya by the sound of how flabbergasted it was. “I doubt that, Lucas. I would have noticed—”
“Priya, for the love of god, I’m not trying to lie to you. Get on the com-line and talk to the Director. And take your hand off that button.” there was a note of warning in Lucas’ voice, and it went beyond anything Jane had ever heard before. What it promised, she didn’t know, but she fancied it would be quick and it would be forthright. “Just do it, Priya.”
There was a pause, and Jane opened her eyes and shifted her body to the side until she could see the rest of the room. Lucas and Priya were there, and there was also a pale-faced human scientist sitting at a console, looking at her and then back to Lucas, and then back to her.
Though she was some distance away, Jane fancied she could still make out the expression on Lucas’ face. He was staring right at her, gaze locked with hers, jaw set.
They stared at each other for a moment.
Perhaps her savior was here after all.
…
Lucas Stone
Prack, he’d managed to get there just in time. What if he’d been late? What if he hadn’t made it? Would Priya have actually done it? Would she have disintegrated Jane? It was crazy, it was mad. It went against everything he’d ever been taught by the Galactic Force. The disintegration of a real live being wasn’t something you did at the flick of a switch. Well, actually, it was something you did at the flick of a switch, but you bloody well got permission first. It wasn’t an easy decision; it was a hard, perilous moral problem. It was the kind of thing you only did if it was 100% necessary. Killing was a last resort, not something you mulled over afterward.
Though Priya had likely been seconds away from actually doing it, a part of him doubted the implant would have let it get that far. As soon as he’d snapped into the room, his bio suit had picked up a reading coming off Jane. Some kind of energy, some kind of interference. The same inference that was messing up Priya’s computers. If it had come to it, no doubt the implant would have found a way to get through the containment field, and then… well, who knew what would have happened next. If it felt Jane was under sufficient threat, it would get her out of the situation, no matter what the costs. And Lucas didn’t want that to happen. Though he knew that the implant was effective, and he could appreciate why it was there, he could see what it cost Jane. The amount of damage it had done to her body in its desperate attempt to get her off Earth was staggering.
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 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 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 lay there. She didn’t clutch a hand to her head or start screaming at him to shut up. At least now she’d 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 wasn’t 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 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 confused look, she 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. He was suddenly 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 sorry for the guy. Not only was he 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 that word.” 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 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 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 answered.
“Recruit? A scientist?” Priya asked.
“Works in admin, actually.” Lucas matched pace beside her and fought the urge to 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 laughed, and it was an unhappy laugh. “I’m telling the truth. But you want more? I don’t really know. I think she’s Paran, but that’s about it. I can’t confirm it.”
“Paran?” Priya’s expression 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 kinds of heavy moral issues right now. 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 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 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 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’s 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 couldn’t 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 angry. “Lying to the Galactic Force—”
“Look, whoever is sending you these messages is going to be the one who picks up your response. Now lie to it. Tell it exactly what it wants to hear. That you’ve killed Jane.”
“I do not understand the point of this misdirection,” the Director said, twisting his hands over and over again – if you could call them hands, that was. They were more like pincers with digits. They made a clicking sound as they kept on running into each other. It was clear that he was nervous, worried even. Lucas would have it no other way. This situation wasn’t an easy one; it was intense and far too fragile.
“It wants her dead. It is not going to stop until it thinks she’s dead… trust me, it will come here. If you tell it you haven’t killed her, it will find a way to get here as quickly as it can. Then it will,” he swallowed through a choke, “kill her itself.”
“But why? You just said she’s an administrative officer,” Priya pointed out as she crossed her arms, “I’m sorry, but I have trouble believing that a member of a mysterious and dangerous race has come all the way to Earth just to hunt out administrative officers. She obviously doesn’t have any specialized knowledge or skills. Why on Earth would this creature be after her?”
Lucas drummed his fingers on his leg and realized that Priya was wrong about him. She only ever saw what she wanted to see, anyway. Lucas didn’t drum his fingers when he was about to lie; he did it when he had no idea what to do next. When he was nervous – when he had to try to come up with a solution on the fly. “The Paran Artifact told us that Specimen 14, the Darq, will go after the most important targets first, and leave everything else to last.”
Priya snorted. “I’m failing to see how Jane could be important then. Do you think it is after her implant?”
Lucas shook his head. “No, I think the implant is what tried to keep her safe. Look, all I know is that I think she’s Paran, and that in itself is important. The Darq wiped out the Parans. Maybe it is trying to finish off the job….” Lucas flinched as he realized that while his suggestion sounded plausible, it was missing the point. There were plenty of other Parans out there in the Galaxy, well, okay, not plenty, as they were reduced to a disparate and wandering race these days. After the destruction of their worlds, the few surviving Parans had disappeared into the various races, cultures, and nation states of the Galaxy. Yet they were out there. Lucas was sure that some of them, perhaps all them, would hold positions that were more important in the grand scheme of things than an administrative officer. Wouldn’t the Darq go after them first? If it were simply trying to kill off all the Parans, wouldn’t it go for the most important ones before it worked its way down to Jane?
No, he was definitely missing something; there was still so much he didn’t know. Yet he did know one thing: it was beyond doubt that Specimen 14 wanted Jane dead.
“If we lie in our communication, if we tell the Galactic Force that we have gone through with their desires, fake or not, and claim to have killed Specimen 14—”
“Her name is Jane,” Lucas pointed out fruitlessly. It was obvious the Director knew what her name was. Yet Lucas did it anyway; it was important to him.
“Jane then. If we tell the Galactic Force that we have done as the communiqué suggested, will not this creature come and check? Will it not come here anyway to ensure that the job is done? If it is as determined and skilled as you suggest, then I doubt it will simply take our word for it.”
“It will buy us some time,” Lucas looked up at the Director, and he hoped his expression was just as steely and gutsy as he needed it to be. “And we really, really need time here.”
The Director kept on moving his pincers around and around.
“Lucas, this is mad, standard operating procedure—” Priya began.
“No longer operates,” Lucas jumped in. “Galactic Force communications have been compromised. We can no longer rely on directives from them, so it is up to us to act autonomously until we can re-establish clear communication.”
“But sending a communiqué back lying—” Priya began.
“Listen to me, Priya,” Lucas turned on her, and he was surprised at the raw edge of emotion in his voice, “this is important, trust me, this is important. We need to do something now.”
Priya blinked, and it was clear she was surprised. She probably had a great deal to be surprised about; Lucas had never displayed emotion like that in front of her before.
“Lucas,” she said softly, “what is going on?”
He shook his head, the move jolting through his neck and shoulders.
The Director started to move his pincers around faster and faster. “We have now received ten more communiqués from Galactic Force asking for immediate confirmation,” the Director looked right up at Lucas.
“Tell them you’ve killed her,” he pleaded again. While Lucas could technically take command of the security forces of the station, he didn’t have the authority to tell the Director what to do, unless he outright removed the man from his position. Though that was a power Lucas had – if he deemed the Director to be compromised – that was a huge step. You needed a hell of a lot of evidence to remove a senior official from command. Right now the only evidence that Lucas had was a database that had been uploaded to his armor by an artifact that had sprung out of a box. That kind of crazy story never got you much support in court.
There was a tense moment of silence, and Lucas didn’t shift his eyes off the Director once.
Then finally the Director nodded. “I will trust you, Lucas Stone, because you are Lucas Stone,” he said simply and with a staccato voice, a usual feature of his race.
Priya rolled her eyes derisively. “Just because he’s Lucas Stone doesn’t mean anything,” she pointed out, though thankfully she didn’t turn around and beg the Director not to follow through with his crazy plan. She just set her gaze on Lucas and shook her head. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I have no idea what I’m doing,” Lucas admitted, “but I know what I’m not prepared to do, and that’s enough,” he added in a far more determined voice. “Now remove the security field from Jane. I need to get her out of here.”
“What, on that reconnaissance ship of yours? Is that safe? Do you really know who she is? Do you really know what that implant can do?” Priya bombarded him with questions.
“What is the nature of this implant?” the Director asked quickly.
“It’s some of the most sophisticated technology I have ever seen,” Priya answered without turning to the Director; her gaze was still locked on Lucas, “it’s also Paran.”
“Well then, it makes sense to conclude that she’s Paran also,” the Director stated plainly.
Priya shook her head. “That’s an unwarranted jump.”
“The Parans have never let another race use their technology. In fact, I have read many historical accounts that suggest only Parans can utilize it. So if she has a Paran implant, it makes sense to conclude that she’s Paran. Otherwise, it would not operate,” the Director’s voice was still choppy, but it was firm.
Priya now looked around at him, and perhaps she took a moment to remind herself that while she was the Chief Scientist, she wasn’t the Director.
The Director stood up straighter, and Lucas reminded himself just how tall his race was. The Director towered over Lucas by a good meter and a half.
“I wish to go and meet this Jane now,” the Director said. “I have just sent a false communique to the Galactic Force suggesting that we have disintegrated her. It is only polite that I now go and introduce myself.” The Director walked out of his office, having to bend low to get through the door.
Though the situation was still fraught and incredible, Lucas couldn’t help but laugh at that. The Director’s race always did have a strange sense of humor. And when the situation was as black as this one, sometimes you needed to laugh.