A Plain Jane Book One (5 page)

Miranda set her head to the
side and gave him a look that said it all: she was the doctor and
didn't need to be told what to do by a little soldier boy. ‘I have
run all the tests, Lucas, and I can assure you that Jane is
fine.’

‘
Jane?’ His eyebrows descended a
touch.

Miranda pointed to the woman on
the bed. ‘You don't even know her name? Oh, Lucas, you are
lame.’

That was another thing,
another thing that dogged him. If the fame wasn’t bad enough, for
some reason the rest of the Galaxy thought Lucas was a womanizer.
They believed that every single night he wasn't on duty he was out
with somebody new. That he didn't just blaze his way across the
universe, but he slept his way across it too. No matter what Lucas
did or said, he could not shake that view from his friends, let
alone the media. So he just wore it these days. He stopped fighting
it, and just went silent whenever anyone would mention
it.

‘
Just tell me,’ Lucas said with a
sigh.

‘
Lucas Stone, you sound tired. Do
I need to fix you up again? Have you broken something, have you
scratched something? Have you been in a bar fight, have you taken
on an entire group of mercenaries? Have you dived into the dying
engine of a cruiser with nothing but stupidity and a gun again?’
Miranda asked quickly, her eyes narrowing.

Lucas shook his head, even
clapping a hand to one of his temples and looking around from
underneath it. ‘Believe it or not, Miranda, I am just
tired.’

‘
I have trouble believing that.
You are not just tired, you are overworked. If I had my way, you
would be taken off duty and you would be forced to have a holiday.
When was the last time you had any recreational leave?’

Lucas offered her a thin smile.
‘I'm afraid you no longer have the authority to order me off duty
for medical reasons.’

Miranda looked at him darkly.
‘So much the worse for you, Lucas. Because if I had, I would be
delaying that little mission of yours until you were properly
rested, maybe even until you got a life outside of work for a
change.’

‘
Thank you, Miranda, but I do
have a life. I would have thought as a physician, you would have
picked that up already.’

‘
Oh I don't mean that kind of
life, Lucas, I mean the kind of life with meaning, with happiness.
You know, the kind of life everybody else has? With recreation,
with holidays, with something other than endless work.’

‘
I don't need one of those,’
Lucas replied with another thin smile. ‘But I really do need you to
tell me that the woman over there, Jane, is okay.’ Lucas could tell
that his expression had changed in that moment, that whereas before
he’d been sarcastic, now he was genuinely concerned. He honestly
couldn't help it; he really was concerned. That woman had just been
attacked by one of the most vicious and capable robots in the
galaxy.

Miranda crossed her arms, kept
her lips pressed together for a moment, and then took a sniff. ‘She
is fine. In fact, she is better than fine. If you asked me, and
you’d just brought her in off the street, I would have told you
that this woman was in peak physical condition and certainly had
not just had a run in with an assassin robot.’

Lucas could feel his eyes
narrow and his lips spread wide, not in a smile, but in a confused
frown. ‘Excuse me?’

Miranda shrugged her arms and
shoulders, the move very expressive and bodily. She also looked
confused, but then the usual control and barely suppressed
annoyance that always commanded Miranda's expression returned to
her. ‘I don't know, Lucas. The important thing is she is fine. She
is also not human, which might have helped her rebound.’

‘
Not human?’ Lucas glanced back
at the woman. She certainly looked human. Though these days that
didn't exactly mean much. The Galaxy was a big place, and if there
was anything the last several centuries had taught humanity, it was
that their idea of an alien had to be expanded a whole lot. He’d
read a little about Earth's history, and for a period there, their
idea of aliens was of the giant headed, beady eye, slimy,
gray-skinned variety with three fingers and a penchant for crashing
into military airbases. In reality, there were so many planets and
so many aliens out there, that the range of forms that life came in
was incredible. Some aliens honestly did look almost exactly like
humans. Some of them could make themselves look exactly like
humans, and yet again others underwent simple surgery to obtain the
same effect, though such surgery was rarely effective. The point
was, you could never be too surprised if the apparent Homo Sapiens
in front of you was in fact a creature from the planet Alpha
Terra.

That being said, Lucas was
still shocked. After all, Jane just looked . . . he
couldn't quite get a handle on it, but she just looked plain. No,
that wasn't the right word, because she certainly wasn't plain. The
way she looked so fixedly out the windows was intriguing, certainly
not boring. And while she didn't have the kind of standout features
that would see her getting work as a Galactic anchor woman or the
like, she wasn't ugly, even though that was a term he hardly used.
There were so many aliens out there, which such different looks and
concepts of beauty, that ugly didn't mean much these days. By human
standards, while Jane looked normal, and wouldn’t stand out, there
was still something unique and intriguing about her.

She'd also had a run-in
with an assassin robot and was now apparently completely okay,
which was something Lucas was having trouble believing.

Now he crossed his arms,
and stared over at Jane, his eyes pressed together, his jaw
set.

She finally looked around
at him, tearing her eyes from the view. She took one look at his
expression, blinked rapidly, and then turned right back to the
window.

She’d obviously thought he
was staring over at her in anger, as his expression hadn't exactly
been friendly.

He was putting it off, but he
took a sigh, and walked over to her. ‘Are you all right,
Jane?’

It took a moment for her
to look up at him, and when she did, she still had that same
pursed-lipped expression on her face, her eyes filled with an
almost wary look. She nodded.

Miranda walked up beside him,
her holo-pad still in her hand as she flicked through some
readings. ‘Your readings are fine, perfect even, you really don't
need to stay here much longer.’

Jane gave a brief nod. ‘Thank
you, Doctor.’

‘
That being said, however, I am
sure Lucas probably wants to ask you some questions. If he gets too
annoying, just call me and I will sedate him,’ Miranda
winked.

Jane gave a small,
flickering, awkward little laugh, and Lucas couldn't stop himself
from smiling at it. It was cute in a weird way.

Miranda walked off, but
not before patting a hand on his shoulder and bending in to tell
him that if he didn't get any sleep, she would get into his house,
break his legs, and put him into an induced coma.

Finally the two of them were
alone. It was odd that Lucas could remember the first time he’d met
Jane. It was odd because Lucas had met many people over the years,
done many things, and had a head full of memories with a hell of a
lot more power and import. Yet he could not deny that it had stuck
with him anyhow. ‘I need to ask you a couple of questions,’ he
managed, realizing that his voice was quieter and more hesitant
than it usually was. He was used to questioning people after
security incidents, and had fought one-on-one with some of the most
deadly and highly trained creatures in the Galaxy. He was also
accustomed to salvaging crucial missions just in the nick of time,
and yes, his friends were right about one thing: he was used to
talking to women, even if he did not deserve the wild reputation
they’d invented for him. Yet now he was having trouble.

Jane looked up at him, her
expression not exactly friendly.

‘
Umm,’ Lucas found himself trying
to pat a hand over his short, sandy blond hair. But his armor got
in the way, and his hand glanced off the transparent but still
rigid structure of his helmet. He tried to hide the move by giving
a cough and tucking his hands firmly behind his back as if he were
on parade. ‘What happened before I arrived?’

Jane looked down at her hands,
then out at the night sky above, and then finally back to him. Her
expression still hadn't improved any, and he had to note that it
was at odds with the kind but awkward smile she’d offered Miranda.
‘I don't know. I was just walking to the transport hub, and
then . . . ’ she trailed off. She looked
confused, and her features crumpled, her hands forming fists at the
same time.

She was probably frightened,
probably scared out of her mind, probably completely shocked. Maybe
Miranda's biological readings were wrong, and something was
confusing the medical scanners, because Lucas could tell that this
woman was still scared out of her wits. ‘It's okay,’ he said
gently, nodding his head very slightly. ‘You are fine in
here.’

She flicked her gaze back
up at him. Her expression was pained, almost annoyed.

‘
Ahh, do you . . .
do you have any enemies?’ Lucas asked, even though he knew it was a
ridiculous question. He’d already looked up Jane’s file, and could
tell that she was about the most normal, plain, and simple Galactic
citizen that you could hope for. She had no fines, no tickets, no
warnings, and she’d never been in anything that could be described
as an 'incident'. In fact, it appeared as if she’d led the quietest
life possible. Yet people with such quiet lives did not find
assassin robots trying to hunt them down. No, he had already made
up his mind that for whatever reason the robot had attacked her, it
had not been because she was its target. Perhaps she’d seen
something, and it had come after her in order to cover its trail.
Yes, that was the only real version of events that made any sense
to him. So the entire point of asking her if she had any enemies –
if she knew of anybody rich enough, brazen enough, and capable
enough to somehow smuggle one of the most illegal creatures in the
Galaxy to Earth – was a waste of time. She wasn't the real target.
But dammit, her strange, clearly annoyed look had thrown
him.

Lucas wasn't accustomed to
receiving looks like that, especially from women, and especially
not around the Galactic Force. While he spent most of his time
complaining about it to Alex, it was a fact that most of the people
around here treated him like an untouchable celebrity. Whenever he
asked anyone anything, whether it be for directions, the time, you
name it, people would drop whatever they were doing and organize a
crack team to get him the best directions, estimation of time, or
response possible. Lucas honestly did hate all the attention, but
he couldn't deny he was used to it. Now to have a woman he hardy
didn't knew look at him with such annoyance . . .
well, he didn’t understand. Perhaps she blamed him for the assassin
robot getting on the grounds in the first place? Perhaps she
thought that he could have acted sooner, intervened before it had
even touched her? Yeah, that was probably it.

‘
Enemies?’ The same annoyed look
of confusion still crumpled her face. ‘I don't have any enemies. I
am far too plain for that.’

While Lucas was still smarting
under the force of her irritated look, he couldn't help but let his
lips curl up slightly at that. ‘Plain?’ he questioned. What exactly
would that have to do with anything? It was an odd way to describe
oneself. Lucas had seen enough violence and destruction throughout
the Galaxy to know that whether you were plain or interesting,
danger could still knock on your door. You could still be on a
cruiser when it lost life support, you could still be on a planet
when it got wiped out by a supernova, you could still be on a
street when space pirates attacked. Plain had absolutely nothing to
do with how this Galaxy operated and how you got along in
it.

‘
I am very plain,’ Jane repeated
again, ‘and nothing like this has ever happened to me.’ She
returned to the confused look that he’d noted before.

He wanted to laugh, and he
really had to grit his teeth in order to stop himself. It probably
wouldn't look good to laugh at the woman who’d just had a harrowing
experience and had almost died at the tail point of an assassin
robot. News like that would quickly spread, and Lucas would
probably get some kind of letter from his fan club telling him to
treat damsels-in-distress better. Instead he tried to flatten his
hair again, and once again his hand just jammed against his helmet.
‘Okay,’ he said slowly and carefully. ‘Do
you . . . .’ He was going to ask her whether
she had any idea why the assassin robot might have attacked her,
but it was stupid. Because he seriously doubted that it had been
after her. In fact, honestly, there was little point in questioning
her at all. If Lucas wanted to find out what was going on, he
should just go to the security headquarters and trawl through the
various computer files and sensor readings that had been picked up
before, during, and after the attack. He could attempt to trace
where the assassin robot had come from, and maybe if he was lucky,
he could find the name of the person who’d imported it by the end
of the night. Questioning Jane was pointless. Yet while he knew
that, he couldn't drag himself away.