A Plain Jane Book One (2 page)

Lucas stood there for a
moment, smiling heartily, his teeth practically glittering. He
didn’t have his armor on today, he was in his dress uniform. As
with everything he wore, he looked damn near perfect in it. Or at
least some version of perfect, a version of perfect that Jane did
not quite share. While she did go home every single night and dream
up little romantic fantasies for herself, the likes of Lucas Stone
were never included in them. Her romantic leads weren't anything
like Lucas; they were kind, bashful,
capable but dignified. They had flaws,
fears and limitations, with a great sense of humor. And most
importantly, they always displayed modesty
and humility. In other words, they were
light years away from Mr. Universe, Lucas Stone.

Still smiling, Jane could see
that Lucas took a big breath, his chest puffing out against the
white, black, and gold of his dress uniform. ‘I am sure you have
all heard about the upcoming mission to the outer rim,’ he kept on
smiling, but now there was a glint in his eye, a glint that
appeared to suggest that there was nothing more important in the
world to him. ‘I do not need to tell you that no Galactic ship has
traveled through Hell's Gate for almost one hundred years. The
scientific and technological discoveries to be made could redefine
our generation, and pave the way for a brighter future for all of
the races of the Galaxy.’

Everyone in the room gave
a smattering of applause, even a mumbling of approval. Of course
they’d all heard about the mission, and everyone knew that nobody
had passed through Hell's Gate in over one hundred
years.

‘
If we pull this mission off, we
will be the first people to cross beyond the Pillars and to come
back again. The scientific data we can gather by studying the
unique singularities throughout Hell's Gate could advance our
current understanding of quantum field theory by
decades . . . ’

Jane started to tune out.
She could still hear Lucas speaking of course, but she began to pay
less and less attention to him. Instead she let her gaze wander to
her left, until it settled on the view outside of the huge flex
windows. She could see the other buildings of the Galactic Force,
even see the rest of the city stretching out behind, and especially
the sky above. She did like the sky; it was always so big and
inviting, and quite frankly non-judgmental. The sky didn't seem to
care that Jane was boring. The sky had not once called her
plain.

As always happened when
Jane started to get distracted by the view, her mind began to
wander. She liked to plan her little night-time fantasies in
advance. Right now, she imagined a dignified, capable, handsome,
accomplished galactic adventurer, someone a little bit like Lucas
Stone but without that personality. Someone who didn't command the
limelight, but shunned it instead. Someone who wouldn't ever
consider her plain, because they wouldn't ever consider anyone
plain. They would look beyond the appearances – they would see the
beautiful dynamism and creativity inherent in everything. Perhaps
he would have sandy blond hair, perhaps he would be half human and
half Elurian, his eyes a glowing electric blue. But most of all, he
would not judge her.

It was while Jane was
engaged in her daydream, twisting her long mousy brown hair around
her fingers, that she missed something very important.

It was also when Mandy
whipped out with her tail, poking Jane hard in the back.

Jane gave a splutter,
falling forward right into the holographic display of her
terminal.

Of course everyone turned
to look at her, because the sound she'd made was a very loud,
awkward, and disrespectful noise considering present
company.

Rather than stop to admonish
her in front of her colleagues, Lucas didn't appear to notice. He
might have glanced her way once, but that was it.

In fact, he seemed to be
finished. Everyone was now back up on their feet
clapping.

Jane had absolutely no
idea what they were clapping about, as she had fazed out through
the entire thing only to tune back in from a tail poking her in the
back.

H
e gave a bow, turning on his heel as he
immediately left the room. Leaving them in peace. Well, not peace
apparently, because the second he left, was the second the entire
room erupted in happy chatter.

Mandy turned immediately to
Tarta, her face absolutely lit up with interest. ‘By the Lord of
Yarla, can you believe it?’

Tarta nodded his head simply.
‘I have never been wrong about that man; he has, as the humans say,
a head on his shoulders.’

Jane wanted to point out
she had a head on her shoulders too – having such a feature didn't
mean a great deal. Instead she turned back to her holo terminal in
order to get on with her work. Though she didn't want to know what
Lucas had said, she couldn't help herself from overhearing everyone
in the room. You would think that Lucas had come in offering
everybody signed autographs or perhaps a personal dinner with him
that very night. Nope, it was nowhere near that grand. He hadn't
offered anybody a role in the team for his up-coming mission, but
he had, apparently, said that their division would be involved in
the administrative side of putting the team together from the very
best, most promising recruits and seniors at the Galactic Force. By
the way everybody else was talking though, you would have thought
they’d all won the Galactic lottery – not been assigned extra work
that they wouldn't get paid anything more for. Ordinarily Jane
didn't think too much about money. She certainly did not gripe
about how much she was paid, but for some reason the very thought
that Lucas Stone was trying to give them more work made her want a
small moon in return, and maybe even a large planet too.

It was unusual for her to
be in a bad mood because, as Mandy would point out, she was far too
boring to have an emotional reaction as interesting as anger. Yet
Jane wasn't exactly pleased at the moment. So she sat there, pursed
her lips, and returned to her work. The administrative unit she
worked for was responsible for the data collection, consolidation,
and maintenance of all results, enrollments, and related tasks that
went on throughout the Galactic Force. It was a fairly simple job,
and didn't require a great deal of skill or training, but Jane
liked to think she was at least okay at it, if that was something
worthy to admit on the same day that the great Lucas Stone had
popped his head in the door.

The best and the
brightest, apparently that was what Lucas wanted on his trip. Fair
enough, everyone always wanted the best and brightest, nobody ever
wanted the slightly okay and the moderately interesting. Well,
nobody but Jane that was.

~~~

Jane worked until late
that night. With the hullabaloo over Stone's visit, everyone else
had been far too busy talking about his heroic mission to bother
getting any more work done. So Jane, being Jane, had offered to
stay late and do what was needed. Plus, she always liked working
late anyway; if she had her preference, she would work alone. It
wasn't because she shunned human company, or alien company, for
that matter. Jane wasn't antisocial; she was just awkward, quiet,
and apparently far too innocent. Whenever she espoused her
'sugar-coated, candy-style views of the universe', Mandy or others
always told her that she simply didn't know what she was talking
about. That was another reason why Jane never bothered to go out.
Whenever people started to talk about the current state of the
Galactic Senate, as they always did, she would always put forth her
rather happy, optimistic views, only to be shot down and told she
was thinking like a child.

Yet she didn't hate her
co-workers, far from it; Jane held them in high esteem and valued
each and every one of them. She just knew she was different. Very
different. Different in a way that everybody else would assume made
her ordinary, but she knew it went beyond that. She knew there was
more to her, and that if people bothered, if they tried, if they
suspended their views and judgments for just long enough to get to
know her, they would see what was on the inside. All the
adventures, all the romance, all the life.

Jane knew she did not fit
in. She knew that she’d never fitted in. Even as a child, she’d
been different. After all, she wasn't a human but she had grown up
on Earth. Not that you could tell without a thorough physical exam,
of course, but Jane was technically an alien. She wasn't an
interesting alien: she wasn't like an Elurian mercenary or a Hirean
sprinter, or anything like that. Jane's alien DNA was, fittingly,
quite plain. She had the full appearance of a human, but she wasn't
quite as strong, quick, or attractive. As one of her colleagues had
once joked, Jane managed to do human duller than the humans did.
She didn't have any pincers, any tails, no third eye, no incredible
strength and agility, nothing to set her aside from the crowd.
Which pretty much summed up Jane perfectly: there was not a thing
in her history, schooling, ability, or her appearance that could
possibly set her apart from the crowd. In fact, all of her features
did exactly the opposite: they embedded her so far into the realm
of normalcy that she became just too normal, so normal, in fact,
that there was zero point in talking to her or looking her
way.

She planned on working for
at least the next two hours, and then taking the late transport
back home. She would have all tomorrow morning off because of the
overtime, so she could spend most of the night sitting up on the
window ledge gazing at the stars. One peculiarity about Jane's
physiology, and possibly the most interesting thing about her, was
that she didn’t sleep. To a normal person, that would seem like an
incredible feat, and pave the way for an enormous increase in
productivity, but it did not have that effect on Jane. She spent
the time when everyone else would be sleeping, staring at the sky
and imagining instead. She knew it was a regenerative process for
her body – she always got cranky if she wasn’t given time to dream
– yet she did not lose consciousness while she did it. It was
almost as if her brain never wanted to lose control of her
body.

It was when Jane had
almost finished her work, and was finally getting ready to leave,
that the building shook. It was very slight at first, and she
hardly noticed it, but when the Central Intelligence – an
interconnected computer system that ran throughout the entire
Galactic Force – began to blare with a warning, she realized that
something serious was up.

‘
Ci, what's going on?’ she asked
the computer. She always called it Ci for short – its full title
being Centralized Intelligence Unit, but Ci being far shorter and
far cuter. Now that was perhaps another thing that set Jane apart:
though Ci was just a computer, Jane liked to treat her as something
more. Yes, she was simply an artificial intelligence, just a system
of computer banks and interconnecting panels; she did not have real
intelligence or emotions, and in fact, one could simply say 'she'
wasn't real at all. But Jane liked to think she should treat
everything – from a tree, to a human, to an alien, to a rock –
exactly the same. With perfect dignity. Well, maybe everything
except stones. Lucas Stones to be more specific.

‘
Depressurization has occurred in
containment chamber one,’ Ci replied quickly, her synthesized voice
expressing no emotion.

While technically Ci did
not show any outward feeling, Jane always liked to think that there
was a certain warm efficiency about her.

‘
Thank you, Ci. Is it serious?’
Jane asked quickly.

‘
Containment has been
re-established. Correct personnel have been notified. There is no
risk to life or property,’ Ci advised, voice maintaining a
perfectly even tone.

‘
Thank you, Ci,’ Jane said with a
sigh. Which was a little silly really, because she shouldn't be
sighing at the rather pleasant fact that the building and everybody
in it were fine. Perhaps a deeply buried mutinous part of her
personality had wanted something a little more exciting, something
more adventurous for a Monday night. Yet Jane buried that voice,
said good night to Ci, and walked out of the office.

It was when she was
walking across the campus to one of the transport hubs that the
thing attacked her. She had no warning, she had nowhere to run, and
she had no chance.

Chapter 2

Lucas Stone

‘
Prack, how could we lose
containment?’ Lucas slammed his hand down on the bench, his armor
suddenly deploying.

‘
No idea, but we’ve got it back
now. No problem,’ Alex replied.

No problem? Lucas thought
to himself, like hell. If there had been no problem, they would
never have lost containment in the first place. No problem meant
the experiment going off without a hitch and Lucas finally getting
some time to go home early one of these days and just having one
blessed night off.

With his armor now in
place, he was picking up readings from his environment that were
being transferred directly to his central nervous system. It
sharpened his senses, gave him details that he could not see with
his ordinary eyes and could not hear with his ordinary ears. The
armor was like a living second skin. As soon as he activated it
with a single thought, it would grow up and cover his whole body in
a second. He had to admit that he thought it was some of the
coolest technology out there, and definitely the most
fun.