A Plain Jane Book One (7 page)

To top it all off Alex had
finally finished the tests he’d been running on the thing down in
the basement, and the news was disturbing in the extreme. They
still didn't know what it was exactly, but now Alex confirmed that
it had a highly-sophisticated nervous system, suggesting that it
had once been alive. Whether it was a being from that mysterious
race, Lucas didn't know, but he wasn’t resting easy about it. Alex
had also managed to perform several other tests, and they’d all
suggested that whatever it was, when it had been alive, it would
have been a force to reckon with.

There was so much going on, and
to top it all off, the Dean of the Galactic Force herself had
requested – no, demanded – that Lucas attend a party that very
night. Apparently it was meant to be some informal gathering to
celebrate the imminent mission. Lucas knew exactly what informal
would mean though: everybody would be there, from the Galactic
Force, to the news, to the Mayor of the city, just everybody. If
Lucas even dreamed of leaving the party early and actually getting
some sleep, he knew he’d have no hope of doing so. He would be
expected to spend the entire night at the party, flying the flag of
the Galactic Force. A flag he never had permission to put
down . . . ever. And it was a flag that was getting
heavier the longer he held it.

But more than the party
and the specimen in the basement, and even the curious Jane,
i
t
was meant to
be arriving today.

They’d found it on a world
not too far away from the rim, right on the edge of Hell's Gate. It
was on one of the old home-worlds of an empire called Para. The
Parans were now a fractured, nomadic race, made up mostly of
refugees. Though once they’d been a great power. In fact, only 100
years ago the Parans had been a major force in Galactic politics.
Then one day they’d just upped and disappeared.

The Parans had always been
a reclusive, even secretive race. They’d never let outsiders onto
any of their planets, and they’d very rarely let their
representatives travel out into the Galaxy. So when one day the
communication lines between the home-worlds of Para had gone dark,
nobody had been able to find out what was going on. Then, slowly,
over the years, the news trickled out that their ruling government
– their Royal Family – were no more. The history was still very
sketchy, and was made up, not of hard facts, but of anecdotal
evidence gleaned from refugees, traders, and adventurers dumb
enough to go that far out. Yet somehow and with someone, the Parans
had likely gone to war. In fact, it had probably been the very last
war between two sovereign nations that had occurred in the Galactic
Union to-date.

Without the ruling family, and
without a government, the empire that had been Para was no more.
When the very first probe had been sent to that area of space, and
had managed to successfully scan a Paran home-world close to the
edge of Hell's Gate, the information it had sent back had been
simple and clear. Every planet had been razed. There was nothing
left anywhere, anyplace. The once great race was no
more.

The thing that Lucas was now
waiting for – the artifact, as they called it – was meant to arrive
this very morning. It had been excavated on one of the outermost
Paran worlds. They couldn’t get to the central planets of Para, as
they were all inside Hell’s Gate, and the sheer quantum disturbance
that ran through that area had made it far too unsafe to mount any
sustained mission . . . until now that
was.

In fact, yet another
reason that Lucas was being sent on his mission was to find out
exactly what had happened to the Parans and whether it had anything
to do with that mysterious, unknown race.

Now an artifact from one
of their home-worlds was on its way here. Though Lucas should
really give it his full and total attention, considering its
probable importance, he had to go to a goddamn party. Sometimes he
wondered whether he was cursed, whether he’d done something once to
irritate some mysterious god of some mysterious race and now he was
paying for it. He would never sleep, he would never get any peace,
and he would be forced to spend the rest of his days running around
the Galaxy with hardly time to blink and breathe as he went from
mystery to confusion, to crisis. Miranda had told him to get a
life, and even though Lucas had insisted he already had one, the
fact was he really didn't. He didn't have a life, he had a job, and
his job completely consumed him.

While he knew he should
prepare before the artifact arrived, Lucas found his legs taking
him somewhere else entirely. Before he was aware of it, he’d
already walked down the corridor that led, not to the basement or
the hangar-bay where the artifact would be arriving, but to the med
bay. It was stupid, and it was a useless waste of time, but now
that he found his legs mutinously taking over his body and
directing him there, he just went with it, letting out another
great sigh and telling himself that he needed to get his priorities
straight. Right now, with the possibility that somebody had
imported an assassin robot onto Earth, combined with the fact he
likely had an example of a mysterious and probably quite deadly
ancient Galactic race in his basement, his priorities should not be
strange, strange, plain Jane in the med bay.

Yet he couldn't deny that he
kept on thinking about her. There were two things that managed to
hold his attention, and only one of them was the fact she’d had a
run-in with an assassin robot and had somehow managed to come away
Scot-free. The other one . . . well, Lucas couldn't
put his finger on it – it eluded him. But it was still
there.

When he arrived in the med
bay, it was to the sight of Miranda rushing around, busy as always,
and Jane nowhere to be seen.

Miranda glanced up at him,
and she looked thoroughly annoyed, just as she always did whenever
she clapped eyes on him. She seemed to scan his body instantly,
probably looking for life-threatening injuries, or maybe even mud
on his shoes.

She eventually walked over to
him, peeling herself away from whatever frantic job she was doing
at one of the sophisticated computer terminals. ‘She has gone
home.’

‘
What?’

‘
Don't play cute, Lucas, I am
talking about Jane. The same woman you’ve been calling me about
every two darn hours. The same woman you no doubt came in here to
check on. I am telling you that she has gone home. I will tell you
once and once only that she is absolutely fine. There is nothing
wrong with her, and she was not injured in the slightest.’ Miranda
clapped her hands on her hips and had the kind of look in her eyes
which just challenged Lucas to say something. The kind of look that
she would possibly accompany with a quick jab of a hypodermic to
the neck if she didn't like what he was about to say
next.

Lucas was in no mood to be
chased off by Miranda however, not today, not when so much was
going on. ‘What do you mean she’s gone home? I didn't allow—’ he
began.

Miranda rolled her eyes and let
out a sharp and angry laugh. ‘The last time I checked, you were not
a doctor, and you are certainly not the Chief Medical Officer of
the Galactic Force Main Campus,’ she said emphatically. ‘That, Mr.
Lucas Stone, means that your opinion about whether my patients are
fit to return home or not is entirely irrelevant.’

He shrugged, putting his hands
up instinctively. ‘Look, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I
meant that as far as I know, she wasn't given security
clearance—’

‘
It came through this morning.
Apparently they are absolutely confident that they have fixed the
hole in the security net, and something like this is not going to
happen again. Plus, they assured me they would do standard protocol
on this, and they have fixed her biometric readings into one of the
planetary scanners, and she will be monitored. If anything happens
to her biometrics, if any threat is detected in her vicinity, she
will be transported out of there.’ Miranda crossed her arms, and
for a moment she maintained her thoroughly annoyed expression, but
then she just sighed, and finally looked across at Lucas like he
wasn't the nastiest piece of scum in the universe. ‘Lucas, you look
absolutely horrible. You didn't sleep last night, did
you?’

He replied with a sigh.
‘There's too much going on, I just have too much to do.’

‘
Oh, you are busy, are you? What
do you think I will be doing the next time you are dragged in from
fatigue, or the next time you make a silly mistake and get your arm
blown off? I should not have to tell this to somebody who isn't a
child, but sleep, Mr. Lucas Stone, is not a luxury, it is an
absolute necessity. If you can find the time to go to parties, then
you can find the time to go to sleep.’

It was his turn to roll his
eyes. ‘So you have heard about that, then?’

‘
We have all heard about it.
Apparently the entire Galactic Force has been invited. After all,
it is not every day that wonder boy Lucas Stone is given command of
one of the most important missions of our century,’ Miranda's
usually curt tone suddenly turned conversational, and it was clear
that she was trying to mimic the tone the Dean of the Galactic
Force always used when talking about Lucas and the
mission.

‘
You know, Miranda, if it was up
to me, I wouldn't be going,’ Lucas said through a tight
smile.

‘
Oh, grow a backbone, man, and
break your own leg and get exempt on health reasons. I would be
happy to give you a hand,’ Miranda grinned.

Lucas replied with a short
chuckle. Then he remembered something: sleep. Miranda had said that
Jane didn't sleep. It wasn't that surprising, not considering that
he already knew that Jane was technically an alien. Different
aliens had different sleep patterns, and some of them didn't sleep
at all. It was a big Galaxy, and there were a lot of surprises out
there.

‘
What do
you . . . .’ he trailed off, not really sure
what he wanted to ask. He wanted to know exactly who Jane was –
more than what was written on her file. She was such an enigma,
from the way she acted, to the fact she’d been attacked by an
assassin robot and had, rather than being scared out of her wits,
been mildly annoyed at the prospect something exciting had happened
to her on her way home from work. But how exactly did you put that
question into words? More importantly, how could it be answered? By
someone other than Jane, that was. Yet he could appreciate from his
brief interaction with her last night that she wasn't exactly going
to tell him.

He didn’t have to formulate his
question, because Miranda looked down and to her side, her eyes
narrowing, her lips closing slowly. It was the kind of look she
always got when she was thinking, when something had stumped her,
and when she was trying to chase it down and make sense of it. ‘She
is an odd girl,’ Miranda acknowledged slowly. ‘Nice enough,
actually, an absolute sweetie, but she
is . . . .’

Lucas felt an electrical
tingle rush down his spine. He had to be careful, because he didn't
want to inadvertently activate his armor, but he could not deny
that Miranda's expression and what she’d said had an effect on
him.

An odd girl.

Lucas met a lot of women
in his line of work, and they were everything from Galactic
Security Officers to the daughters of Senators, to the best and
brightest, to glow in the dark fans. Yet he very rarely met odd
girls, and certainly not in the way that Miranda was
suggesting.

‘
Very strange physiology,’
Miranda sucked in her lips and shook her shoulders, ‘well, not
strange. In fact, that's just the thing, she is slower, less agile,
weaker than your average human, but . . . oh, I
don't know, I just can't seem to put my finger on it. There is
nothing there in the readings to suggest she isn't anything but
absolutely normal, but . . . ' Miranda trailed
off again.

Lucas stood there and the more
he listened, the more he felt . . . something he
couldn't quite describe. It was almost like anticipation. What
exactly was Miranda getting at? She was one of the most capable
doctors he’d ever met, and she was almost certainly one of the most
determined and least flustered. For Miranda to be stumped by
something, and in such a way that it genuinely confused her, well,
Lucas didn't know what that meant, but it made him feel nervous.
‘You said she doesn't sleep, is that normal?’

Miranda looked back at him and
she shrugged her shoulders again. ‘Not for you or I, maybe, but for
her it seems absolutely fine. There are many, many races out there
that do not sleep, and some that simply do not sleep in a way that
we can recognize. Jane, as far as I can tell . . .
sleeps while she is awake. It is not that unusual, and I have seen
it before.’

Sleeping while she was
awake, damn, he would give anything to have that kind of physiology
right now. If he could somehow manage to get some rest while in one
of the many and incredibly boring meetings that he was forced to go
to these days, he would bloody well do it.

Then he suddenly frowned, as
something appeared to click into place in his mind. ‘Is that why
she stares off into space?’

Miranda smiled. ‘I imagine so –
that or she finds you boring. After all, how long did you think it
would be, Lucas, before somebody out there would find the great
Lucas Stone not all he was reputed to be?’