A Plain Jane Book One (6 page)

‘
Why were you here so late?
Doesn't your division close at . . . ’ he
trailed off; he had no idea what time the Administrative Division
of the Galactic Force closed, it wasn't his area. He could guess
that they normally didn't hang around until 11 o'clock at night
though.

‘
I was working late,’ she said
quickly, almost primly.

‘
Okay.’ He honestly wanted to say
something more sophisticated, but he couldn't think of anything. To
be honest, the woman's standoffish attitude was really throwing
him. He wasn't used to negative attention like this. ‘Look, I'm
really sorry that this has happened, and I'm sorry I didn't get
there sooner,’ he tried, even swallowing loudly at the
end.

Jane didn't immediately reply.
‘How was it your fault?’ she finally asked.

‘
Well,’ he shrugged his
shoulders, his arms suddenly feeling awkward, and he moved them
around, not sure of where to place them, ‘I am in
security—’

‘
I know what you do,’ she said
quickly, ‘and it isn't your responsibility to ensure that nothing
at all goes wrong at the Galactic Force ever,’ she pointed out
curtly.

Lucas nodded, now finding
himself totally confused too. It wasn't the response he’d been
expecting. He had, over the years, saved many women, men too of
course, from hundreds of different species. Yet this would be the
first time that someone he’d rescued had been
so . . . so unresponsive about it. Hell, only last
week he’d prevented a woman from getting electrocuted by a badly
installed holographic panel, and when she’d turned out to be a
card-carrying member of his Fan Club, she’d practically demanded to
have a holographic scan of the two of them so that she could send
it to her parents and friends. Yet here was Jane, sitting carefully
on the edge of the bed, splitting her attention between looking
mildly annoyed at him and looking back outside the window, up at
the night sky.

‘
I . . . ’ he
began, no real idea of what to say next.

‘
It must have been a mistake,’
Jane said, ‘perhaps that creature was confused and thought I was
someone else. Or perhaps it thought that I had seen something, or
overheard something, and he was coming after me in order to cover
his trail,’ she suggested. It was exactly what Lucas had thought,
almost exactly the same words that had been going through his mind.
‘No, it must have been a mistake. Things like this don't happen to
me,’ there was a great deal of authority and certainty behind her
words, and once again Lucas found himself smiling at her, although
he wasn’t sure why.

Things like that didn't
happen to her? What kind of rationale was that? Just because she’d
never been attacked by an assassin robot before, didn't mean that
she would never have the misfortune of being attacked by one ever.
Just because she’d never received a ticket or even a warning,
didn't mean she couldn't find herself in a Galaxy full of trouble.
And just because she referred to herself as being plain, didn't
mean that she couldn't intrigue the hell out of him. Indeed that
was exactly what she was doing. She seemed so certain about the
fact everything had been a mistake, and she stared up at the night
sky with such a strange fixed look to her eyes that, well, Lucas
was dying to know more about her.

He didn't get the chance,
because at that moment a live communication feed filtered in, being
redirected from his armor. For the sake of privacy he turned from
her, and took several steps away from her bed.

Jane

Lucas Stone. It had to be
Lucas Stone. She couldn't have been saved by anybody else in the
Galaxy, oh no, just Lucas Stone. She was right about him too; he
was very, very annoying. From the way he looked, to the way he
acted, to the way he seemed thoroughly put out because she wasn't
throwing herself at his feet and kissing his boots because he’d
saved her.

Jane realized she was
obsessing over Mr. Universe as a distraction from a far more
important thought: she could have died. That creature, whatever it
was, it could have killed her. It had tried – it had tried really
hard to kill her. She’d seen the glint in its eyes, she could still
hear its hiss echoing around her mind, and she’d watched that tail
pull back ready to strike her through the heart.

Things like that didn't
happen to her, they had never happened to her, and they were not
meant to happen to her. Being attacked on Galactic Force grounds
and saved by the Galaxy's most eligible bachelor was the kind of
thing that would happen to Mandy, it was not the kind of thing that
would happen to Jane.

She was having immense trouble
trying to process it all. She’d decided that whatever that creature
was, its attack on her had been opportunistic or simply mistaken.
After all, Jane had never done anything to anyone, had never been
in any kind of incident, and had never put herself in any kind of
scenario where danger would come her way. Yet now she was sitting
on a hospital bed, Lucas Stone standing several meters away from
her as he talked into the com-line of his armor, just trying to
make sense of it all.

It didn't help that she was
tired, not for want of sleep, but from the need to stare up again
at the sky and let her mind roam free. She was constantly being
interrupted. Doctors coming over to do readings on her, telling her
that she was fine, looks of surprise across their faces as if they
rather preferred that she were on the verge of death. And now Lucas
Stone.

Jane crossed her arms and
let out a heavy sigh. It was a funny thing, but while she often
found herself imagining wild, crazy, and often very dangerous
adventures for herself at night, she simply could not imagine them
really happening to her; imagination, after all, was different from
reality. While her imagination ran wild, her real life just sat
there quietly and boringly in a small corner.

When Lucas finished his
conversation, he appeared to hesitate before turning back to her.
His expression was one of confusion, and perhaps he was having
trouble figuring out why she wasn't absolutely throwing herself at
him in praise and thanks for his brave deed. Instead she sat there,
her arms still crossed, knowing that her expression showed clear
irritation. Which was quite strange, because Jane usually went out
of her way to ensure that her expression was just as kind and
gentle as it could be. She believed that every single person or
alien in the Galaxy deserved to be treated with dignity and
complete respect. Yet that little rule didn't extend to Lucas
Stone.

He tried to pat his hair
again, and once again his hand glanced off something. Jane knew
enough about his armor to realize his helmet was still on but set
to transparent. It was odd, and it didn't seem like the kind of
thing that Lucas Stone did, so Jane figured that rather than trying
to pat his hair he was probably checking for faults or
imperfections along the back of his armor.

Before Lucas could begin
questioning her about whether she had enemies again, Jane pushed
herself off the bed. ‘Can I go home now?’ she asked directly. ‘The
doctor said I was fine,’ she pointed out, crossing her arms again.
There was something about Lucas Stone that made her want to cross
her arms and keep them there.

He looked a little taken aback.
‘I . . . ’ he trailed off.

‘
I'm fine. I'm not scared or
anything,’ she added quickly. It was completely true; Jane wasn't
scared at all, she was just confused. Confused that something like
this could happen to someone like her. She was also tired, very
tired.

He looked at her for a
long moment, and though Jane wasn't the kind, she felt a blush
paint her cheeks pink. She repressed it immediately by crossing her
arms even tighter. While she spent most of her nights fantasizing
about romantic adventures, Lucas Stone was never in
them.

‘
No,’ he finally said, and a deal
of confidence ran through his tone. ‘Until we know exactly why that
thing was after you . . . ' he began. Before he
could finish his sentence, he turned away once again, his eyes
flicking to the left.

He was obviously getting
yet another call on his com-line.

Jane stuck her bottom lip
out and blew a puff of air up until it played against her
fringe.

After a while, as it
became clear that whatever conversation Lucas was having was an
important one, she sat back down on her bed roughly.

‘
Dammit,’ she heard Lucas say
bitterly, she even saw his shoulders hunch over for a
second.

For some reason that
managed to get her attention, and rather than stare at him like he
was a giant universal creep, she found herself wandering what could
make the great Lucas Stone express such bitter disappointment. She
did not have the chance to find out, because in that moment he
turned, jogged across the room to the doctor, told her something
and then headed for the door. Before he went through it, he paused,
half turned to Jane, his mouth open as if he wanted to say
something, but then stopped, shook his head, and finally exited the
room.

Jane stared on, her eyes
narrowed, her eyebrows furrowed with confusion, and her arms still
crossed.

Then she couldn’t resist
it any longer, and turned her head back up to the night sky
outside, and let her mind slowly wander off.

Chapter 4

Lucas Stone

It was all going to hell,
honestly it was. He hadn't had any sleep all night long, and now he
was in his third meeting and the morning was not over. This one was
with the Chief Engineer, who was telling him curtly, though still
politely, that it was taking too much energy to keep two
level-three containment fields running around the clock.

Lucas sat there, almost
wincing, his breath heavy.

‘
We just can't keep running them
much longer. We'll exceed our generation capacity,’ the Chief
Engineer repeated as she sat back in her chair, crossing her three
long green arms.

‘
I know, I understand that,’
Lucas acknowledged as he rested his head in one hand, ‘but I don't
see any way around this.’

‘
Just disintegrate it,’ the Chief
Engineer said, tapping one of her hands on the table quickly. ‘You
know it's an assassin robot, we've taken all the readings we can,
and we don't need it anymore. Keeping it in that containment field
and stopping it from regenerating is pointless. They are illegal,
and there is a Galactic Senate decree that they have to be
destroyed if found. Disintegrating it is the only option. We don't
need to keep it around any longer.’

Lucas nodded; he could
see her point. Still, he couldn't shake the niggling feeling that
he needed to keep that robot around for
some
reason. But the Chief Engineer was right, and they had
taken extensive scans of the creature which should give them all
the information they required. There was also sufficient evidence
to hold up in court should he actually find the idiot who’d
imported the creature in the first place. Really, the most sensible
and smartest thing to do was to destroy it.
Still . . . .

‘
I do understand that I don't
have clearance to know what you’re keeping in the basement, but if
you want whatever is down there under a level three, then you can't
have the assassin robot under one at the same time. We just don't
have the resources. There are too many other systems we need to
run, too many other experiments that people are conducting, and if
you keep these two containment fields up, we are going to have to
start draining from the city's energy grid, and you know how much
the Mayor hates it when we do that.’

Lucas nodded several times, as
if he were just a leaf flapping in the wind. Which was kind of how
he felt at the moment, with absolutely no energy, no control, and
pretty much zero idea of what was happening. ‘How long can we keep
it operating before we have to drain the city's power supply?’ he
asked, looking the Chief in the eye.

The Chief was clearly annoyed,
and she drummed all eight fingers of her far left hand on the
table. ‘If it was anyone else, Stone, I wouldn't be telling you
this, I would just go and pull both fields
myself . . . . But you've probably got at least
two days before it becomes a major issue. And you will owe me
several Edarian beers for this.’

Lucas let out a small laugh and
nodded. ‘Thank you, Chief.’

‘
They'd better be a good brew
too,’ the Chief added as she stood up from the table and left the
room.

Now Lucas was alone. He
hunched his shoulders forward and closed his eyes, pressing against
his eyelids with his thumb and forefinger. Dammit, things were
happening too quickly. Not only had there been the mess with the
assassin robot, but he’d also received a priority call from a
scientific mission out on the rim, with some very interesting if
not entirely disturbing information about an archaeological site
they were at. He should have spent the whole night reading through
their report, not running around and trying to find out how
somebody had managed to ship a completely illegal synthetic life
form onto Earth.

Plus, he couldn't get her
out of his head. He’d called sick bay several times to ensure that
she was still there, and that she hadn't just up and walked out.
Each time Miranda had confirmed that Jane was still sitting right
on the edge of her hospital bed, staring up at the sky as she’d
done all night long. At first Lucas had thought that sounded odd,
and had urged Miranda to check that there was nothing wrong with
Jane. Yet Miranda had just snapped back that it was, in fact, a
perfectly normal part of Jane's physiology and had told him to hang
up the com-line so she could get some work done.