The Crucible: Leap of Faith (23 page)

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.

He 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.

The end of the excerpt. This
series consists of three books (A Plain Jane Book One, A Plain Jane
Book Two, and A Plain Jane Book Three), all of which are currently
available.

Check out the
first book
here.

Odette C. Bell is the
author of over 60 works ranging from sci-fi to fantasy. If you’d
like to check out her catalogue with plenty of free samples and
full-length books, it’s available
here.