Chapter 15
Jane
There was a lot happening, and it was all happening in a short space of time. Of course, Jane didn’t know much about adventure, but she still suspected that ordinary people didn’t go through so much in barely 24 hours. Which was an incredibly uncomfortable thought, because it confirmed that perhaps Jane wasn’t normal, after all.
… Wasn’t normal. It was such an unpleasant thing to think about; she’d labored under that belief her entire life. So what was happening to her felt like the greatest injustice in the world. Nothing like this could happen to her, nothing like this should happen to her.
She wanted to return home and try to forget about it, but she knew Lucas wouldn’t let her.
He was turning out to be different from the person she’d once hated – the person the rest of the Galaxy assumed him to be. Yes, some things were correct: Lucas Stone did like to save people, but he wasn’t arrogant about it or even triumphant. In fact, it simply appeared to fatigue him. He went from one save to the next, with no rest, with no recuperation, and with no celebration. And it seemed the longer he stayed with her, the more he would be doing just that. She could tell that he was tired. His shoulders drooped whenever he was talking to her, his head leaning to the side, not in apparent interest, but because he clearly couldn’t muster the energy to hold himself straight.
She wondered how long he could keep on doing it for. She got away without sleeping, but she knew enough about humans to know that they couldn’t.
Yet with disaster after disaster happening all around her, she knew that Lucas would not let himself rest. Another thing the fan supplements had gotten right – he was determined to the point of exhaustion. It didn’t come from any grandiose self-belief; he simply seemed to try to solve whatever problem was in front of him without any ability to let himself rest until the solution came to hand.
He was now sitting next to her in the command chair, his palm squarely docked with the console, his head leaned forward. He still had his armor on, and he hadn’t yet switched his helmet to transparent. Perhaps he was trying to catch some quick shut-eye underneath there and didn’t want Jane to notice. Though she really doubted it.
She sat in the chair next to him, her hands clutched firmly in her lap, her lips pressed together, and her gaze settling on some innocuous point on the view screen.
The ship was now traveling at BL, beyond light speed, and the image on the view screen, though mostly black, sometimes speckled with sudden flashes of light, the twisted view of distant stars racing past them at unbelievable speeds. Though Jane had never seen it in real life, she’d seen simulations of it before.
He hadn’t said anything to her since they’d boarded the ship and had undocked from the Central Shipyards.
In fact, he’d simply synthesized her a glass of water, handing it to her in silence, then he’d immediately docked his glove, sitting in the command chair and not moving once.
She was starting to wonder whether he was angry at her, or in fact whether he was starting to have questions, probably valid questions about whether he should help her at all.
The evidence was mounting against her. She’d overheard the Director when he’d said they’d received communications from the Galactic Force asking whether they had disintegrated her yet. Worse than that, he’d referred to her as Specimen Jane. Specimen Jane. She’d seen enough low-quality holo-adventures to know that whenever the scientists and good guys referred to something as a specimen, they almost always ended up killing it.
Jane found herself twisting her fingers around and around each other. It was a move that reminded her of what the Director had done immediately after Adam Thomson had tried to attack her. She couldn’t stop it; she seemed too nervous, filled with a horrible tension.
Who could blame her? She had no idea whether Lucas trusted her anymore, no idea what was after her, and no idea what would come next. She was starting to get the impression that the thing in her head knew exactly what was going on, though. The… the thing… had acted on instinct, keeping her safe while Adam Thomson had tried to cut right through her with an electro blade. Even if Jane didn’t have anything to rely on, she seemed to be able to rely on it. While it was insidious, and could control her body and mind, it still acted to preserve her, and that was something.
Jane gave a stuttering sigh and rested further back in her chair. She greatly wanted this adventure to be over now; she’d had enough of it.
That finally managed to get Lucas’ attention, and he turned her way. “Are you okay?”
He always asked that question, it was as if he couldn’t think of anything else to say to her. Though, to be fair to him, it was a pertinent and valid question considering the current situation. She just nodded and then shook her head, and then nodded again. She was thoroughly confused by everything. And yeah, she kept on thinking about Priya. The way that Priya had acted so familiarly with Lucas, and, more importantly, the way she’d begged Lucas not to trust Jane, and not to go anywhere with her.
“We will figure it out. We will head to the contact, and then…” Lucas trailed off.
The contact. The Paran. As soon as Jane thought that word, a stab of pain crossed through her head, and she winced.
She could see that Lucas suddenly clutched his free hand into a fist.
“Everything will be okay,” he settled on saying again, and it was apparent that he thought it was safer to simply repeat that over and over rather than try to discuss the details of where they were going and who they were going to see.
It didn’t want her to know. It didn’t want her to think about it. Yet it seemed to be letting her follow through with the plan.
It was confusing.
Jane wasn’t going to let herself be completely confused by it; she was starting to realize that if she thought carefully, she could think around it. If she didn’t use the “I” word or the “P” word, she didn’t get the stabbing pain. As long as she thought in general terms about where they were going and what they were going to do, it didn’t seem to object.
As she sat there, fingers twisting around each other, her face still angled up toward the view screen and not toward Lucas, she finally made a decision. She was going to do everything she could to find out what was going on. Though she still wanted to scream at herself occasionally that she was far too normal for any of this, she was going to push past that, and she was going to figure it out. It was no doubt going to be incredibly hard, but she was going to do it nonetheless.
Jane had never had cause to be determined in her life: things had happened to her easily, she’d never faced any problems, and by and large everything had been comfortable and, yes, normal. Though she’d never had any family, she’d never been without help, money, or some form of protection and housing. When she’d needed a job, she’d fallen into one. When she’d needed a house, she’d found one. When she’d needed schooling, she’d received it. There had never been trials or obstacles and Jane had never found herself in a situation where she’d needed to push herself.
Now she was no longer that lucky; for the first time in Jane’s life she was finding out that she needed a great deal of determination to get through this.
So Jane sniffed again.
“You should get some rest,” Lucas suddenly said, probably thinking that her sniffs were not of the determined variety but were of the incredibly tired and fatigued kind.
She turned to him and shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think you should get some rest. I don’t need sleep and I’m not tired,” she said forthrightly.
Though she still couldn’t see Lucas’ face, she could appreciate that he receded slightly in his chair, and she imagined that he looked surprised underneath all of that hulking black armor.
“I can’t—” he began.
“You have to,” she interrupted immediately. “You look as if you haven’t slept in ages. And even though I’m not human, I think I understand that if you don’t sleep, you will eventually die
,” she said plainly, “and if you intend to eventually die, then why don’t you just shoot yourself right now and get it over with?” she ended with another sniff.
Lucas made a strange noise, and his shoulders tipped forward in an instant. It was halfway between a choke and a laugh. “Look, I’m fine—”
“You will begin to lose speed and agility,” Jane said as she looked up to the left, trying to remember as much as she could about human physiology, “and, while I don’t know a lot about your armor, I do know that it is linked to your nervous system. I once saw something on the Galactic News where a security officer had gone several weeks without sleep, and then his armor had kind of overridden his brain or something and put him into a coma. Something to do with overriding suicidal tendencies…” she said slowly, having to think hard about each word as she tried to remember exactly what the report had said.
Finally, Lucas switched his helmet to transparent, and Jane saw just how tired he looked underneath there. He shrugged his shoulders again. “It is true: built into all bio-armor is a certain set of emergency protocols that will stop the wearer from acting in a way that’s threatening to their own life, unless needed in combat, of course. But trust me, I’m not about to slip into a coma,” he gave a chuckle, though it was throaty and croaky.
Jane just shook her head. “I once read in a fan supplement that you said that any proper soldier is always willing to keep themselves in top physical condition to be able to respond in the best possible way that they can in every situation they face.” Whereas before she’d had to think quite hard about her words, now they came freely and easily. After all, she may not know that much about bio-armor, but she did know a hell of a lot about Lucas Stone. A simple fact she’d not appreciated much until she’d actually met the man.
Lucas laughed again. “They got me to say that so that kids would stop eating so much Hoyan candy,” he said bluntly.
“Well, I didn’t realize you were a liar then,” she stared at him blankly.
“Liar?” he asked quickly, a note of annoyance in his voice.
“I think you know what I mean,” she turned back to the console in front of her and crossed her arms.
She was aware that Lucas was still staring at her, and she could see just how surprised, confused, and almost amused he was in her peripheral vision. Yet she didn’t turn back to him, she just kept her arms crossed and her gaze fixed in front of her.
Lucas chuckled awkwardly. “Alright, alright, maybe I can try to get a couple of minutes’ rest.” He even stretched his shoulders at that.
Jane nodded her head firmly.
“I can set the computer to wake me up in ten minutes or so,” he said with a heavy sigh.
Jane nodded her head, though she didn’t completely agree with his statement ten minutes? Try ten hours.
“We are at BL, and the computer has set course… we should be okay,” Lucas said again, finally standing up. Then he just sat down again.
Jane looked at him, knowing that her eyes were narrowed in anger. She guessed that he was intending to sleep right in the command chair rather than going to use one of the fully appointed sleeping quarters. “Oh no you don’t,” she said at once. “Go to bed,” she pointed toward the back of the ship.
Lucas spluttered through a laugh at her again. “You can’t order me around; you just work in admin,” he set his jaw at an angle and looked at her pointedly.
She didn’t move her finger. “Go to bed. To maximize the efficiency of your nap, you should lie down, so that all of your muscles can rest.”
Lucas shook his head as he looked at her, and laughed again, finally rolling his eyes. “Fine,” he said, “fine, you win. Ten minutes,” he repeated, and then he leaned forward to the console, docking his hand, and no doubt telling the computer to wake him up just when he wanted to.
Then, finally, Lucas Stone turned around and walked heavily out of the room, leaving Jane alone.
…
Lucas Stone
He didn’t wake up to the feel of his armor jogging him out of sleep. No, he woke up naturally. Then he blinked his eyes several times and wondered whether he’d reached his ten minutes yet. The strange thing was he felt refreshed, refreshed, far more refreshed than six or seven minutes of a power nap could account for. So he opened his eyes and sat up in bed, stretching easily. “What’s the time?” he asked out loud. He didn’t need to do it; he could easily request the time with a single thought to his armor, but he did so anyway. It was a habit, more than anything, a habit that stemmed from the fact he’d not always had bio-armor implanted in him. Once he’d been a normal, non-augmented child. The kind of child that had run around all day in the fields and valley just outside of his grandfather’s house. His grandfather had practically shunned technology. Instead of having an integrated communications system wired through their place, his grandfather hadn’t even had a food synthesizer, preferring an old stove instead. So Lucas had grown up looking at the clock to find out the time or asking someone, not submitting a mental thought to the bio-armor grafted onto his bones and waiting for it to respond with perfect accuracy.
Now for the first time in what felt like years, he’d woken up naturally.
That didn’t fill Lucas with a sense of nostalgia. He jumped up from his bed, jammed his finger on the button that opened the door, and ran at full pelt to the bridge. He didn’t know what he was expecting to see, and his armor shot into place immediately.
When he rounded the corner onto the bridge, running as fast as he could considering it was a small ship with narrow corridors, he didn’t see a war, a battle, or even a small skirmish. What he saw was Jane sitting peacefully in the navigator chair, staring out into the middle distance, with nobody trying to attack her.
She turned around as he pelted into the room, her eyes blinking languidly and finally focusing on him. Then she smiled slowly.
“What happened?” he asked immediately, aware that his voice was filled with concern, suspicion, and just a little note of blame.
He couldn’t deny that Jane was sitting there and smiling with quite obvious satisfaction. “You slept,” she pointed out plainly.
“For almost ten hours,” he said quickly, voice curt. “What happened? I set the computer to wake me up in ten minutes—”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know, but I wasn’t about to wake you up. Ten minutes’ rest is —”
“Jane, what did you do to the computer?” he interrupted, voice strained with accusation as he crossed his arms.
She blinked back at him. “Excuse me? I didn’t do—”
“You hacked into the computer and stopped it from waking me up on time, didn’t you?” he was annoyed, annoyed.
She narrowed her eyes at him, her usually cute button nose crumpling with obvious anger. “Excuse me? Hacked into the computer? How on Earth would I do that? I just work in admin—”
“Jane,” he repeated once more, arms still crossed in front of him. Then he stopped. Because she was right. She couldn’t hack into the computer; she was just a simple office worker.
She couldn’t have done it, but the implant could have.
He locked his jaw in place, looked at her for another moment, and then let his arms fall loosely to his sides. “Sorry,” he managed as he walked up to the command chair and sat roughly in it.
She continued to stare at him for a moment, her eyes narrowed and expression irritated and suspicious, then she shrugged her shoulders. “Whatever.”
“Did anything happen?” he asked quickly, though he didn’t need to, as he instantly docked his glove with the main console and waited for the computer to give him any situation reports. In another second, before she could even answer, he had the full history of the last ten hours. He could confirm that nothing at all had happened. They hadn’t received any notifications, no ships had come alongside them, and no rogue Darq had somehow latched onto their ship and tried to attack them while he’d been napping.
“Nothing,” she answe
red, her voice still sharp with irritation.
Though Lucas had confirmed that for himself, he still wasn’t pleased with the situation. If he was right, and that implant of hers had hacked into the main computers and into his armor to let him sleep…. He just shook his head at the thought. Though he was completely fuming at the idea, a little quiet voice in the back of his head noted at least he’d gotten some sleep. A full uninterrupted ten hours to be exact. Though he would probably need a nice holiday to get over the months of stress and overwork that he’d been putting himself through, that ten hours had gone a fair way into paying back his most immediate sleep deficit. While he didn’t feel on top of the world, he felt refreshed.
Finally, he rested back in his chair, undocked his glove, and took a moment before he swiveled his head to her. She’d likely been staring off into space the entire time – when her implant hadn’t been hacking the computer systems, that was. While he could try his hardest to get angry at her for it, it simply wasn’t her fault: he’d seen ample evidence that the implant acted without her knowledge and without her control. He had also seen ample evidence that it only ever acted to keep her safe, even if he didn’t agree with the way that it often did so. Was it all that strange to conclude that the implant wanted Lucas to rest because it was a good thing for Jane? Did it not want him running around alongside her bleary eyed, totally weary, and just about to collapse from fatigue?
Lucas shook his head and wondered exactly what the implant was prepared to do to keep Jane safe. And, importantly, considering what had just happened to him, he wondered what it was willing to do to him to ensure that same outcome.
“Stop shaking your head,” Jane pointed out tersely, “nothing happened, and you got a lot of sleep. This isn’t a bad thing. Perhaps you just set the alarm wrong, or maybe your armor overrode your ridiculous intention to only sleep for a mere ten minutes,” Jane suggested through a sniff.
Lucas nodded, pretending he agreed with her. “I guess you are right, sorry for accusing you. I guess I was just surprised by it,” he used his most diplomatic and careful tone, usually the voice he found himself employing whenever he had to talk to despots, pirate kings, or Senators. The voice that said he believed them, and he was on their side. Lucas wasn’t using that voice for Jane; he was using it for the implant.
Things were getting complicated, but as Jane shrugged her shoulders, most of the annoyed edge to her expression fading away, he couldn’t help but smile. Sure, things were getting complicated, but on some level, they were getting interesting too.
Almost grinning now, Lucas turned back to the viewscreen. He didn’t need to dock again with the computer to know where they were in their flight path. It would only be another hour or so until they landed on the planet. When they reached it… well, Lucas Stone was going to meet his first confirmed Paran. While that would be somewhat monumental for him, as he’d grown up hearing so much about the mysterious race, he knew it would not be a touch on the probable significance that it held for Jane.
Not for the first time, Lucas found himself thinking about how curious it was that the implant seemed to stop Jane from thinking or even hearing about the Parans, but it was content to let him take her to see one in the flesh. Was it all just a ruse? Were they going to get out of the spaceship and head off to meet the contact, only for Jane to run off in the other direction as the implant took control? Taking her out of his life for good?
He didn’t know the right answer, but he hoped like hell that wouldn’t happen.
As he sat in the command chair, occasionally docking his glove as he thought of new questions to ask the computer, he noticed the sharp silence that had spread among them. Jane was still sitting there, but she wasn’t staring off into space with that fixed look anymore. Her current expression had a sad edge to it, her lips pressed together with the corners of them drooped slightly.
He didn’t blame her; she had a lot going on.
If it were anyone else, Lucas would try to repeat to them that everything would be okay, that they would find a way to fix this. Yet he’d repeated that to Jane so many times that it seemed simply futile to keep on saying it anymore. Plus, it was obvious she didn’t believe him. Who was he to state categorically that everything would work out in the end? He didn’t know what he was dealing with, neither of them did. Neither of them knew who Jane was, who was really after her, why Adam Thomson had attacked her, and what would happen next.
“Only 50 minutes till we arrive,” Lucas noted quietly.
Jane dipped her head in acknowledged. She opened her mouth, looking as if she wanted to ask something, and then turned back to the viewscreen.
He watched with interest and waited for her to say whatever was on her mind. It took a long time for her to rub a hand over her eyes and mumble: “What do we do… if it doesn’t work?”
“I… we try someone else,” he replied slowly.
“Then what?” She kept on staring at the view screen.
“Look, Jane, I know there is a lot about this situation that we don’t know, but if we keep on trying to find out more information, we will eventually figure this out. The Director’s contact is a start. If that doesn’t work…” he drummed his hand on the console. If that doesn’t work, he wanted to say, then they would simply try to find another Paran. Lucas got the distinct impression that another member of her race – if Jane were indeed a Paran – would be able to help. After all, the Director had said that only Parans were capable of using their own technology. It had been confirmed that the implant inside Jane’s brain was Paran. At the least a Paran could give them some insights into what it was, how it worked, and why in the hell it might be in there in the first place.
“We will solve this,” he promised.
He stared up at the view screen. They were nearing their destination. Now all he had to do was wait for whatever would happen next, even though a part of him suspected that it would probably be frantic, dangerous, and likely unstoppable.