Destiny's Song (The Fixers, book #1: A KarmaCorp Novel) (3 page)

Mapping the basic social dynamics seemed like an innocuous enough experiment. I sought out a couple of the brighter pairs of eyes. “I see that you’ve seated yourselves into some interesting groupings.” I held up a palm to forestall anyone answering the question I hadn’t actually asked. “That’s something you’ll see in many social settings, and it can give you important clues to work with.”

A girl in the back with temp face tats much like Tee’s spoke up for the first time. “So it can tell you who’s important in the group, stuff like that?”

I raised an eyebrow. If I read her right, she was trying to dig me into a hole—or at the very least, daring me to call Yesenia’s progeny important. “It can. But
you
sit on your own, for example, and that’s something that’s hard for just my eyes to interpret. Maybe the group excludes you, or maybe you control the underground lines of power in the group and you don’t want me to know.”

I could see the surprised flickers of respect hit her eyes. “Or maybe I’m just a loner.”

I grinned, liking her attitude. “Or maybe that.”

A girl at the front turned around, voice flat. “Or maybe you just got here late, like usual.”

That hadn’t changed since my trainee days either. I resisted the urge to punch the by-the-rules bully in the nose—it was ten years too late to be pulling dumb stunts like that. I could, however, possibly make the same point with a little more finesse. Talents never lied, especially if you knew what to ask them.

I walked out from behind the lectern, taking a few deep, cleansing breaths as I did so. “What I’m going to do now is a simple harmonics exercise. I’ll find a core resonant note for each of you in the room, and then play them against each other until I find the notes that blend best together.”

A few heads were nodding—those would be the Singer trainees. They’d have learned the basics of base-note mapping already. “Then I’ll look at what the Song tells me, and how that compares to what my eyes have already noticed.”

Confusion replaced head nods. Finally, a hesitant hand went up over to the left. “But I thought Talents were never wrong.”

I’d believed that once. “They aren’t wrong, but sometimes their information can be incomplete or hard to understand.” And since I was no philosopher, that was as much as I was going to say on the subject. “Watch. If it’s still confusing when I’m done, ask your question again.”

The owner of the hesitant hand nodded and settled back down.

I started with a simple staircase of thirds, purposefully skipping all the pretty scales and soundings trainees were taught to open with. There was never time for that junk in the field.

I hadn’t made it half a phrase before eager harmonics started joining mine. The Singer trainees, answering the question my Song asked of them. I was glad to see they weren’t all sitting together. Their base notes made up a clean chord with no signs of animosity, which was good. Singers rarely ended up in open conflict with each other, but when they did, it was hell for anyone in earshot.

I also noted that none of them much liked bully girl in the front row.

Four students mapped, thirteen to go. I started randomly singing base notes that occurred with the most frequency in big populations. The girl from the front row popped on the second one. It figured—half the bureaucrats in the galaxy resonated with that note. Two others in the class registered for that one as well, and three more came up as tight harmonics.

Bully girl had a following.

Seven left. These were thirteen-year-olds, so I shifted to a minor key, looking for the kids who were playing in the lands of drama and angst. Four more fit there, and two of the Singer trainees echoed my shift, making it clear they hung out there sometimes too. I sang back a soothing message of acceptance. In another five years, most of them would have moved back out of the minor keys, but thirteen was an age to explore your shadows.

One of them sent back a quick subsonic trill of gratitude. I raised an eyebrow at their teacher in the back, surprised. That was advanced for this group. She nodded subtly. Exceptional Talent already noted.

Three left. These would be the tricky ones, and the most fun.

I shifted to chromatics, looking for the offbeat personalities, and smiled as the girl with the face tats pinged right away. Interesting, though—her base note fit in well with the Singers. We tend to attract rebels who know how to behave themselves when it matters. Or ones who would learn that one day, anyhow. I didn’t expect any thirteen-year-old kid to have their shit together.

The next chromatic to hit shocked my Song to its core. Tatiana Mayes, child queen, resonated on a note I hadn’t seen in years—and her base note was a trio. Two of the notes were faint yet, but they were there. Warrior, artist, and rebel, all in a tightly wrapped package of ice.

My eyes darted to the door, but Yesenia hadn’t magically materialized again.

She must know. There was no way she couldn’t.

Cool golden eyes intercepted mine on the return journey. The cub, pissed that I’d wandered off to check in with mommy.

I wasn’t nearly dumb enough to engage that fight. I stepped back behind the lectern and cut off my Song. Time to throw the trainees a couple of interesting bones and get the heck out of town. There was far too much strangeness on the prowl this circuit home, and a smart cog knew when to duck and run.

The student with face tats had her hand up like a shot. “So now that you know all about us, what would you do? If we were like your assignment or something, and you had to get us all to cooperate?”

I’d punch bully girl in the nose, but since someone in charge hadn’t done that already, I had to assume she was filling a purpose. I smiled at the class in general and hummed three quick notes.

The trainee in the back with the trills and the extra dose of Talent laughed. Everyone else stared at her or me, mystified.

Then tats girl put a hand on her belly as stomachs all over the room growled. “The heck? You made us all hungry?”

I grinned. And made my final point. “I stopped a ship’s mutiny that way once.” I waited for that to land. Anything can be a tool if you aim it well enough.

I left to scattered applause, whispers, and a couple of Singer trainees trying to replicate my three notes. They were missing, but not by much.

I grinned on my way out the door. Most of them would forget me in an hour, but a few were thinking. And one or two might remember something I said when they faced down an angry revolt or a power-hungry politico someday.

My version of small ripples. A gift to a pond I deeply believed in.

Not bad for an afternoon’s work.

I
t was totally strange having
a sendoff while still travel lagged from my previous assignment. I eyed the contents of the lime-green beaker in my hand—it probably wasn’t going to help with the travel lag any.

Sendoffs were ritual, however, and one the four of us took very seriously. You never knew when a Fixer might not return.

I looked around at the bodies draped over gel pillows on our tiny living-space floor and grinned. If I was going to die, these were definitely the people I’d want to see last. The four of us had been tight since the first week we’d arrived. The first year of trainee school had been hell, and I’d survived purely and solely because of the lunatics who had chosen to befriend the feisty, angry, blonde-haired demon child who’d been plucked out of a mining colony and everything she’d ever known and hated every molecule of the idea that she was now KarmaCorp flotsam.

I scowled and took a sip of my brew—whatever was in it was already making me maudlin. Being KarmaCorp flotsam had turned out to be a pretty decent gig.

Imogene, far better known as Iggy, poked one of her toes into my thigh. “You don’t get to start brooding already, girl.”

I moved my thigh out of her reach—Dancer toes are crazy strong. “I’m not brooding. Half my brain’s still stuck on the tin can that brought me back here.”

“Fast turnaround, huh?” Iggy reached for a Renulian grape, her contribution to the night’s food. “That’s what you get for being the best Singer in the quadrant.”

I amused myself by watching the artwork on her face wiggle as she talked. She and Tee had been decorating each other again. “Right. That’s why they’re sending me to make sure a couple of healthy adults get all kissyface with each other.” That was treading a fine line on the Ears Only deal, but they’d keep it quiet.

Tee’s eyes danced. “They should have sent Iggy—she’s got the kissyface thing totally down.”

Clearly life hadn’t stopped while I’d been gone on my last gig. “Romeo finally got his act together, did he?”

“Nope.” Raven, our foursome’s resident Shaman, grinned as she reached for the bowl of grapes. “A new guy swooped in and stole all the action.”

“He did not.” Iggy waggled a suggestive eyebrow. “I did the swooping, thank you very much.”

I debated between grapes and chocolate-dipped chilies. “Man, I missed all the good stuff.” I eyed the other two of our crew. “You guys checked him out, right?”

“Did.” Raven took one of the chocolate chilies. “He’s solid.” She grinned at her roommate. “And full of sexy energy.”

Iggy just rolled her eyes. “Like you needed to read the airwaves to figure that out.”

Shamans read all kinds of shit none of the rest of us understand—but if Raven thought this guy was good people, that was about as close to a guarantee as you could get.

Tee grinned and poured more stuff into my beaker. “I just want to know if he has a brother or two.”

I shook my head. “Just how many bed buddies do you need at one time?” Growers were known for their sexual appetites, but my roommate had become something of a Fixer legend in that regard. I took another sip of my drink, damn glad her hormones weren’t contagious. Bed buddies were something I did sparingly and with as few complications as humanly possible.

My roommate fluttered her eyelashes and grinned, entirely unfazed by my teasing. She’d grown up with the comfort of knowing exactly who she was, and the razzing of a lowly mining brat wasn’t going to change that any. I had reason to know—I’d tried pretty hard to shake her, once upon a time.

Raven picked up a bright pink beaker and toasted my direction. “So, what’s your assignment location like?”

She’d phrased that carefully enough that I could answer however I liked. Shamans got Ears Only files a lot more often than the rest of us. “It’s a colony planet. Info’s pretty sparse.”

“Hmm. Past the edges of the civilized world, huh?” She raised an eyebrow. “Want me to look?”

Shamans had ways of accessing intel that the GooglePlex had never heard of. “Nah, but thanks.” It would have cost her to read the airwaves that far away, and I didn’t think I needed it this time.

Raven shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Tee watched me carefully over the top of a multi-colored beaker that was making swirls as she jiggled it. “It’s not like you to head into an assignment blind.”

I didn’t want to be heading into this one at all. “I’m supposed to make two adults with functioning hormones fall for each other—how hard can that be?”

Iggy snorted. “I had a gig like that once.”

I dug back through my memory banks. “I don’t remember that one.”

She grinned. “You should. I came back totally juiced up and it took all three of you to drag me away from the spacer bar.”

That
part I remembered. Dancers got things moving, but it was hard from them to stay out of the surging energy of what they unleashed. Tee was used to swimming in the sexual energies, but for Iggy, it had been an eye-opening experience. For me, too—getting her out of that bar had seared some unforgettable images on my eyeballs. Miners aren’t prudes, but we mostly do things in the dark.

Raven looked at Iggy and grinned. “I think it took you at least a week to stop zinging.”

She should know—the two of them had been roommates since the beginning, same as Tee and me.

Iggy just waved a graceful arm in dismissal. “Whatever. Kish, be careful what you sing at your two lovebirds, that’s all I’m saying.”

There weren’t all that many ways I could get into trouble—Singing just didn’t have the fun side effects of the other Talents. It supposedly made us all spiritual and connected to higher powers, but I tended to leave that kind of woo to the Shamans. I Sing because I have to, because it’s the way I touch the light. And even that much I generally don’t say out loud.

“So.” Raven had settled back with the bowl of chocolate chilies in her lap. She pitched me one, always willing to share her spicy addiction. “How’d you get the rebel biome to behave itself? Scuttlebutt says you flew back cranky.”

Scuttlebutt probably used some less polite words than that. “I used the overwhelming beauty of pentatonic fifths to call them forth into cooperation and reasonableness.”

“Sure you did. And then they all named their firstborn children after you and lived happily ever after.” She grinned. “What really happened?”

I sighed and downed more of my lime-green swill. “I got pissed off. I tried everything I could think of to get them to even consider the other side’s right to breathe air, and when that didn’t work, I sang a note so bad that they all finally aligned themselves to get me to shut up.”

Tee slumped over into a pillow, laughing. “You didn’t tell me that part.”

I hadn’t put it quite that way in my report, either. “It worked.”

Iggy shook her head and took a tiny bite of a chili. “Rebel.”

“Am not.” I waved my beaker at her, somewhat precariously. “I got the job done, and I don’t think I broke a single rule doing it.”

Raven nodded solemnly. “You belong to KarmaCorp, heart and soul.”

She wasn’t far from wrong. “I should. They made me.”

“They made all of us,” said Tee quietly. “We all chose this.”

We had. Belonging to KarmaCorp wasn’t a choice, not if you had Talent. But serving was, and we had all chosen to be active field personnel. Cogs in the great, cranking wheels of KarmaCorp’s mission.

Iggy aimed a toe poke at my roommate. “What’d you put in the brew? It’s making us way too serious.”

Tee snorted. “Dancer toe fungus.”

Raven peered at the bottom of her beaker. “I knew I shouldn’t have drunk it.”

“What’s wrong with toe fungus?”

Iggy’s words were beginning to slur a little—or my ears were. I closed my eyes a moment, letting the sounds of their conversation roll over me. A three-part harmony of sorts, a little off key, but deeply familiar. The cacophony of friendship.

I hummed a quiet, grateful note of my own and lifted my drink.

Bromelain III would come soon enough. For now, I was right where I wanted to be, toe fungus and all.