Destiny's Song (The Fixers, book #1: A KarmaCorp Novel) (4 page)

“
Y
our preboarding drink
, Singer.”

A young attendant in blue stood before me, holding out the slimy gray cocktail that was required of every space traveler. It helped our bodies prepare for the kind of trip our genes had never meant for us to take. I took the beaker, wishing it looked half as appetizing as one of Tee’s drinks.

“It will help with motion sickness and cramping.”

This attendant was clearly new. “I know that, thank you. I also know it tastes like horse piss.”

She smiled a little. “I wouldn’t know—I’ve never met a horse.”

She’d do fine. You had to have a sense of humor to deal with space travelers on a regular basis. We tended to be a cranky lot. “Are we boarding on time?” I didn’t actually know what time that was—with the much quicker-than-usual turnaround between assignments, I’d barely managed to find some clean skinsuits and replenish my stash of reading materials.

“I believe so.” The attendant smiled and took my empty glass. “If you need anything else before you board, just let me or one of my associates know.”

If there was more than one of her in the vicinity, this was one of the better flight companies.

I took a look outside the viewing port at the cubecraft waiting for us, spied the maple leaf on the side, and relaxed. Budgets must be looking good if I was getting to fly with the Canucks. The Canadians were expensive, but they knew how to transport a body in reasonable comfort.

My stomach rumbled in gratitude. The low-budget cubes could be gut-wrenching, to put it mildly.

I found a spot on the wall and set my travel bag down to wait. Many of my fellow travelers did the same. A few paced, and some newbies near the boarding gate were doing the prescribed pre-flight exercises. I relaxed a notch further. No one too heavily inebriated, and no one traveling with toddlers. A group of tanned, muscled guys over in the corner were making too much noise, but hopefully they’d be at the far end of the tin can. If I could manage to get myself seated next to a couple of the businessmen glued to their tablets, so much the better.

A chirpy voice started announcing levels for boarding, and I reached down for my travel bag. Reading materials and chocolate-covered cranberries, check. One ear half tuned to the instructions, I made my way into the sea of humanity that was organizing itself into the three-line formation most efficient for cube boarding. We passed through ID and ticket checks, and then the lines split again, feeding us into nine tubes that led to various entry doors.

I tried not to think about the shapes and lines too hard—they made my brain dizzy.

A small boy a few meters up my line danced in place, fractious energy bouncing off the clear walls of the loading tube. His mother already looked harried.

I gritted my teeth. I knew enough of Tee’s small relatives to know that the next four days weren’t likely to improve his mood any. I also knew how little it would take to calm him—and how totally against the nit-picky KarmaCorp rule book it was to do so. Little actions could have big effects.

The boy let out a shrill and rising scream that beat a Med-pod siren for intensity, hands down.

I sighed and sang a harmonic under my breath. If word got back to Yesenia’s office, I’d be scrubbing compost tubes for the next rotation, but it wasn’t her eardrums on the line.

The boy quieted, taking his mother’s hand.

Several people near me let out sighs of relief. I let go of the harmonic and resumed my slow shuffle forward.

A head bent over my shoulder, and a melodious voice pitched words meant for me alone. “Thank you, Singer—that was well done.”

I looked up at the man in surprise. My harmonic shouldn’t have been audible.

He smiled. “I have grandsons, and I know a bit about calming them down.” He held out a hand. “I’m Ralph Emerson—lovely to be traveling with you.”

Ah. There were at least three Emersons working this quadrant for KarmaCorp. I took his hand and shook. “I’d say the same, but after four days on board, I probably won’t like you any better than anyone else.”

His laugh had the same melodious undertones as his voice. No wonder his family produced Singers. “I appreciate your… initiative.” His eyes said what his words couldn’t—if this got back to headquarters, it wouldn’t have come from him.

I’d probably survive if it did. Technically, I was on assignment already, and arriving with my eardrums intact seemed like it should qualify as reasonable use of Talent.

I didn’t want to have to argue that in Yesenia’s office, however.

Whatever further conversation I might have had with Ralph was interrupted by our arrival at the boarding door. I sighed as he was directed left and I was sent right. Too bad—he’d have made a stellar travel companion. I made my way to my seat and grimaced inwardly as I finally caught sight of it. I’d been dumped in with the loud guys with muscles. No good deeds go unpunished.

I squeezed past two of them and plunked down in the tiny space of real estate that had been designated as mine for the duration of our flight. The guys shuffled around and tried to get their shoulders out of my way, with limited results. Even the Canadians designed their cubecraft seats for underweight eight-year-olds.

I saw the guy beside me taking in the logo on my skinsuit that identified me as a KarmaCorp Singer, and let him look. Fixers generally went incognito for most of their time on-planet, especially the data-gathering stages, but I pulled out the uniform for travel—it tended to encourage people to leave me alone. I’d change at Corinthian Station before I boarded my final hop to Bromelain III.

I caught a flash of a tattoo sticking out from under his skinsuit and raised an eyebrow, mildly curious in return. Space travel is this weird mix of intimacy and avoidance with people you’ll never see again.

He held out his arm so I could see the stylized tat with the curvy, undulating diamond.

That was answer enough. He was a Sun Dancer, one of the crazy breed that strapped solar sails to the arms of their astrosuits and went flying with the stars. No tethers, no spotting crew, no back-up propellant tanks to get back home if their fragile sail took a hit from some space debris.

They were entirely crazy, but I’d flown a couple of dances in virtual, and it was a pretty mindblowing experience. Kind of like being one of those seeds Tee croons to, with the hairy little plumes sticking out of their heads. Flotsam in a vast universe that doesn’t give a damn if you live or die, but enchants you with its beauty all the same.

I wasn’t that kind of flotsam. I didn’t have the freedom to throw my life away on a solar flare gone amok.

Sexy guy raised an eyebrow. “Ever met a Sun Dancer before?”

“Yeah.” I pulled my brain back out of the ether. He probably assumed my glazed eyes were fantasizing about his naked chest, which, judging from what I could see through his skinsuit, wasn’t an entirely unreasonable assumption.

He offered up a grin that was less arrogant than most of his kind. “You ever flown?”

He wasn’t talking about a cubesat ride. “No.” I made to pull the privacy bubble around my head and then reconsidered. It was a pretty long flight, and he didn’t smell like totally bad company. “I’ve heard it’s pretty addictive, though.”

“Better than sex.” He laughed, as much at himself as anyone else. “Most times, anyhow.”

I raised an eyebrow, amused despite myself. “That’s not a great advertisement for your skills.”

The guy strapped in behind us reached around and boffed my seatmate’s head. “Jay, you’re such a dingbat.” He made overt googly eyes at me. “Come sit back here—we know how to romance a woman properly.”

Their odds on romancing a Singer were approximately nil, and I figured they knew that. My seatmate, now named but not at all chastened, pushed a button to call over the serverbot. “Want anything to eat?”

Generally, I avoided making my stomach do any work in spaceflight, but the Canucks usually managed gentle landings, and my appetite was still ramped up from the heavy-grav world of my last assignment. “Sure, so long as they have something that isn’t soy.”

The guy behind us hooted again. “Look out, Jay—this one’s high maintenance.”

Somehow their juvenile antics continued to find my funny bone. I might as well enjoy them for what they were—a four-day distraction I’d never see again. “It’s worse than you think, hot stuff. I don’t do synth-caf, either.” The fake caffeine screwed with my vocal chords, but he didn’t need to know that. “I like my food real.” At least, I did when I could afford it, and these days, Journeywoman wages were almost up to the task of keeping my belly happy with stuff that had swum or mooed or clucked once upon a time. Tee and her family kept us well supplied with things that had grown in actual dirt.

The mining brat had gotten totally spoiled.

Jay pulled out my arm tray and set down a plasticup. “Not soy. Not real, either—sorry, the menu doesn’t run to the good stuff.”

Neither should the budget of a stranger. “That wasn’t an actual hint.”

“I know.” His smile reminded me of an overgrown teddy bear. “But it would have been fun to see your reaction.”

I studied him a little more carefully. Some people slot into a round hole or a square box and you don’t have to think much to figure them out. This guy was a bit of a surprise, which was a characteristic I enjoyed in people I had to sit beside for days. I picked up the cup and settled deeper into my seat. Maybe it wouldn’t be an entirely horrible flight.

He glanced my direction again, eyes pulled to the logo on my skinsuit. “Is it hard?”

That was a long conversation I didn’t generally have with strangers. “Is what hard?”

He thought for a minute, clearly reformulating his question. “Walking around the galaxy with so much power to change things.”

That was a more nuanced question than most people asked. I gave him points for having a brain and using it, and contemplated how to answer. When I wore KarmaCorp’s logo on my chest, every word I said represented the company. And people, even thoughtful ones, often carried plenty of distrust for the entity I worked for.

Three hundred years ago, a small group known as the Warriors of Karma had stopped an intergalactic war in its tracks—and held peace ransom for enough assets to keep the entity they formed independent and non-aligned ever since. People still didn’t know what to make of a company born from a group of peace terrorists. We were a force to be reckoned with, and in most places, a very respected one. But that didn’t always mean people liked us very much. “We have less power than most people imagine.”

He raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound like the official company line.”

It wasn’t. Often, half our work got done simply because of the KarmaCorp mystique. But I was a Fixer with an annoying tendency to tell the truth. I looked at sexy guy’s tat again. Maybe he’d understand better than most. “It’s like your swish suit and jet packs and all that. Fancy toys, but when you’re facing down bumpy solar winds, I bet you don’t feel very powerful.”

He raised an eyebrow. “There’s a difference between power and control.”

“Not for a Fixer.” Control was at the heart of everything we did.

He considered that for a long moment. “That sounds sad.”

It might to a guy who strapped a jet pack on his back and danced with death for entertainment. “It’s better than the alternatives.” Before the Warriors of Karma, most people with Talent had lived short lives full of misery and destruction.

He nodded slowly. “It must take a strong person to live with all that.”

No. Just one who had finally learned to find her purpose in the inevitable. “I just do my job.” And somewhere along the way, I’d learned to like it pretty well. I looked over at Jay, suddenly curious again. “What do you do when you’re not trying to turn yourself into space dust?”

His grin really was appealing. “I’m an accountant.”

I leaned back, amused, and shook my head. “And you think
my
life has issues?”

His laugh nearly made my seat rumble.

T
here’s just
no way to travel for days on end in a tin can, even a fairly comfortable tin can, without hating the universe when you crawl out. And the final insult of thirty-six hours in the transpo ferry from Corinthian Station to the landing terminal on Bromelain III had killed any remnants of goodwill I had left. We’d stopped at seven planets en route to this one, and I’d given up trying to keep track of the flow of grumpy humanity around me.

I stepped out of the disembarking tube into the small, obnoxiously bright waiting area that served as the planet’s headquarters for space travel. My legs felt like they’d picked a fight with a concrete mixer, and I let the surprisingly large number of people milling around push me toward the outer walls. Walls usually had doors somewhere, and I needed a good stretch, something heavily alcoholic, and three days of uninterrupted sleep, preferably in that order.

“Singer.” The woman who’d suddenly appeared at my side barely came up to my shoulder. “If you’d come with me, I can make you a lot more comfortable in a jiffy.”

Apparently, I didn’t need to find my local contact—she’d found me. The woman who had magically appeared at my side was tiny, ancient, and spoke with a voice like a cannon. She was also a KarmaCorp legend. “You must be Tameka Boon.” I studied her hands, encrusted with dirt, and her merry laughing eyes. “You’re not what I expected.”

Her lips twitched with amusement. “Good. I’d hate to be getting predictable in my old age.”

My eyes were drawn back to her dirt-stained fingers—I’d seen those on Tee far too often to mistake them for anything else. “I didn’t know you were a Grower too.” It was highly unusual for Fixers to have more than one Talent.

Her laugh was as loud as the rest of her. “Not even kind of, child. I was a damn fine Dancer once, and occasionally my creaky hips still demand a twirl or two. But here on BroThree, you either grow your own food or you eat soy by the bucketful.”

I scowled. “Soy screws with my vocal chords.”

“I wasn’t born yesterday.” Tameka was quick-marching me down the oversized walkways that funneled space traffic through climate-controlled tubes out into the ecoverse of Bromelain III. “I’ve got you a full supply of Singer-approved meal packs, and your roommate was kind enough to provide me a list of some of your favorite recipes in case you’d rather eat the real thing.”

I felt my eyebrows fly up into my hairline. “You cook? And you talked to Tee?” Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who conducted my research through unorthodox channels.

“A lovely young lady.” My host turned abruptly left. “Here, we can sneak out this way and avoid most of the lines.”

Those lines were the dreaded torture otherwise known as interplanetary customs. Even in tiny spaceports, they were living hell. “Don’t we have to clear the wardens first?”

She grinned. “You’re awfully law abiding for a Singer.”

I’d heard tales about Tameka’s generation of Fixers. “You guys messed it up for the rest of us—there are a lot more rules now.”

That seemed to amuse her more than anything I’d said so far. “We didn’t have Yesenia regularly kicking our balls in. I hear she rides you guys pretty hard.”

I knew better than to complain about the boss. “She runs a tight ship, but she’s always been fair.”

My host nodded, and I imagined I saw approval in her eyes. “I’ve heard that, too.”

“Get a lot of Fixer traffic way out here?” She seemed awfully knowledgeable about how to feed, soothe, and kidnap us.

Tameka ducked through the silky folds of an egress tunnel and beckoned me to follow. “More than you might think.”

That wasn’t something my mission briefing had noted. “Recent activity?”

She snorted. “You know the rules, Singer. I feed you, give you a basic orientation so you don’t commit any big cultural fuck-ups during your stay here, and then I stand back and let you gather your own impressions.”

She was impossible not to like. “You’re awfully law abiding for a retired old fart.”

Her laugh carried all the way to the end of the tunnel and bounced back at us. “Yesenia didn’t send me a tame one this time.” She looked up at me as she put her hand on the egress door. “Good. You’ll need those sharp edges, I think.”

That didn’t bode well.

Then the door opened and I stopped worrying about what might happen tomorrow. A vista of undulating greens and yellows stretched as far as the eye could see. Notes rose in my throat, worshipful and unbidden.

Tameka was watching me again with those keen eyes. “This view’s better than the one out the front doors of the space terminal.”

It was staggering. “I’ve never seen anything like it—are those your grasslands?”

“The very edges of them.”

The landscape moved like an ocean in slow motion, twisting in a mesmerizing dance as winds caressed grasses and the grasses rose up to meet them. I wanted to touch. Heck, I wanted to run into the vast expanse and play a cosmic game of hide-and-seek with the wind.

Tameka smiled, and I felt like I’d passed some kind of important test. “Now you know why a retired old fart like me lives here.” She lifted her hand and waved at a hovering bubblepod. “Here’s our ride.”

I was pretty sure my ride was just getting started. “You have enough solar to power private vehicles?” By my standards, that made Bromelain III a pretty rich planet.

“Lots of sun here. And wind.” Tameka ran her palm over the lock and clambered inside a lot more spryly than I managed after four days of tin canning. “And my little piece of the planet has a lovely underground spring, so we’ve got some micro-hydro hooked up too—that’s how we power Nijinsky here.”

I blinked. “Your b-pod has a name?”

“Certainly.”

Curiosity gets me, every damn last time. “And who or what was Nijinsky?”

“The greatest dancer who ever lived. He loved to defy gravity.” Tameka waved her hand at the dashboard. “Do you trust an old fart to drive, or would you rather I went on auto?”

I would far rather be flown by an old woman than by a pseudo-sentient glass bubble. “I’m fine with manual—I grew up on a mining asteroid.”

“Ah.”

A whole lot of understanding in one syllable—too much, maybe. “Ever been on a digger rock?”

“A few times.” She adjusted settings on the dash and lifted Nijinsky off the ground smoothly. “It struck me as a hard life with a lot of knocks and not enough joy.”

There had been some. I stared out at the vista below, trying not to think too much about a past where I’d never quite known whether I was running from or toward, and let the grasses do their hypnotic work on my tired eyes.

I woke up when Tameka banked hard right and sent my head to wobbling. The view hadn’t changed much, but I had no idea how long I’d been out. “Sorry—I don’t usually fall asleep on the job.”

“You wouldn’t be the first visitor the grasses have put to sleep.”

“I hope most of them aren’t driving.”

She chuckled, and then banked again, less steeply this time, and glanced over at me curiously. “How’d KarmaCorp find you?”

Apparently a nap hadn’t put the personal conversation to rest. “Accident. A small trader ship was out on patrol, had a Singer on board. They got lost and ran into the side of the rock I lived on.”

Tameka winced, as did pretty much everyone who heard that chunk of my history. “I assume the Singer survived.”

For a while. Not everyone else had been so lucky. “My dad and I were out running a survey and picked up the SOS call. When we got there, the Singer was trying to hold the trader vessel together long enough to get everyone out.” The memory of her single pure, clear note ringing out into the galaxy still brought me to the edge of tears.

“Amelie Descol,” said Tameka, voice reverent and sad. “I heard the story. I didn’t know she’d also found a trainee.”

Sending that message to KarmaCorp had been her last act before she died. They’d come for me a couple of months later, one ratty brat from a mining rock who had no idea why she heard music inside her head—or why she’d needed, every night for two months, to walk out under the dark sky and sing Amelie’s note up to the stars. “Someone would have found me eventually.” KarmaCorp’s Seekers rarely missed.

“Likely.” Her eyes scanned the horizon. “Were you happy to be found?”

“No.” I wasn’t sure why I’d answered—this had somehow become an uncomfortably deep foray into the personal. I could still feel the wordless fury of the fiery demon child who had discovered that her new destiny had even less flexibility than her first—and far fewer dark tunnels to hide in.

“You seem to have adjusted.”

There was a clear note of sympathy in her voice, and I didn’t want it. “Not much future on a mining rock.” I’d learned to deal with the change from one kind of flotsam to another. And eventually, I’d found my dark tunnels, my little tastes of freedom. “It worked out okay. Things like your grasslands are a pretty nice payoff.”

“Indeed.”

It felt like something important had just happened, but I had no idea what, and I was done falling asleep on the job. “You have local briefing notes for me?”

“Something like that.” My host cleared her throat and sipped from a water pack. “The short version of culture, whatever that may be, here on Bromelain III. Don’t stand on protocol overmuch, don’t assume we’re dumb farmers, and don’t mess with anyone’s water supplies. Manage all that, and you’ll be fine.”

That was as short a list as I’d ever gotten. “Sounds like a pretty tolerant place.”

“People are spread out here. We keep to ourselves unless we choose company. It helps to keep the peace.”

That was going to throw a few wrinkles in my mission. I needed to observe my targets, and that was a lot easier to do in a crowd. “Do you know why I’m here?”

She snorted. “Half the planet knows why you’re here. Emelio Lovatt sent for you. That kind of stuff doesn’t stay quiet.”

I cursed Yesenia inventively in my head—her briefing had lacked that rather salient detail. “Why the heck would an Inheritor do that?” Most ruling families were very loath to give up any of their power, especially to the KarmaCorp behemoth. And no one got to send for a Fixer, not even planetary royalty. Perhaps
especially
planetary royalty. We weren’t at the beck and call of people with power—we helped them when we chose.

Apparently, we had chosen.

Tameka dropped altitude and smiled mysteriously. “The Lovatts are not your typical Inheritors.”

I was getting that much loud and clear. “Care to fill me in any more than that?” Generally Fixers were left to do their own investigating, and I preferred it that way, but it was pretty clear that Tameka wasn’t our typical local contact.

“I think I’ll leave it at that.” She swung the b-pod out in a low curve, bringing us down tight over the sweeping grasslands. “We’re almost at my place—you’ll be staying with me tonight, and then the Lovatts are expecting you tomorrow. Their accommodations will be far plusher than mine.”

I stared at her, certain I’d developed a sudden and catastrophic hearing problem. “Excuse me?”

Tameka chuckled. “Yesenia held her cards close to her chest on this one, did she?”

“That can’t work.” Fixers worked from the sidelines. Sometimes I went in incognito, sometimes just with a very low profile—but always, the goal was to move freely in the shadows. Staying at a freaking Inheritor’s residence was anything but low profile, especially if they were the ones who had called me in.

“It will let you observe Devan Lovatt closely,” said my host wryly.

It was going to put me in a bloody fishbowl. “And I suppose Janelle Brooker lives next door and comes over every night for dinner.”

“Well, not every night.” Tameka looked over at me, eyes glinting merrily. “And neighbors here live a little farther apart than you might be used to.” She pointed a finger out my side of the bubble. “That’s my shack right there. The nearest folks would be the Rideaus, and they live over that ridge.”

I wasn’t following her finger anymore. I was looking at the tiny, gorgeously angular building of sim-wood and glass dropped in the middle of grassland stretching as far as the eye could see. “That’s yours?”

I could almost feel my host’s hum of warm pleasure. “It is. It doesn’t suit most.”

It was my idea of paradise—full of attitude, bathed in sunshine, and really well hidden. “I don’t suppose we can tell the Lovatts that I fell out the back of the cubesat and will be arriving next week instead?”

“The Inheritor will already know of your arrival.” Tameka descended sharply toward her enchanting home in the middle of the high grass. “But you’d be welcome to stay at the end of your assignment, Singer. I do believe I’ve taken a liking to you.”

I’d already figured that out—her hands were moving in the same dance Iggy’s did when she greeted a friend. But it was good to hear the words anyhow. Fixers learned to take pleasurable moments when they could.

Especially at the beginning of assignments that reeked of impending disaster.