Destiny's Song (The Fixers, book #1: A KarmaCorp Novel) (5 page)

I
slid
out the door of Tameka’s tiny cabin, even in my exhaustion unable to resist the call of the glories overhead. All the glass had made it impossible to miss the blues and greens dancing cold fire across the night sky, casting weird and beautiful shadows onto the rippling gray grasslands below.

Sky magic, my father’s people called it. A Dancer’s heart would flourish here.

I looked around for my host, not wanting to intrude on her privacy. No one built a shack in the middle of nowhere unless they liked a whole lot of time to themselves.

“Behind you,” she said, coming around the north corner of her home. “View’s better from the other side, and I’ve got a couple bottles of cider chilling, if you like. Real stuff—I’ve got a friend who retired to Gaia V and sings to his apple orchards all day long. His first cider tasted like rocket fuel, but these last bottles are fairly tolerable.”

I smiled—I’d been to Gaia V. Elegant, miniscule farms piled one on top of the other. They provided luxury food items to half the quadrant. The cider would be seriously prime. “You’d be claustrophobic there.”

She looked out at her grasslands and laughed. “I would indeed.”

I followed her around a corner, still not sure how angles and glass felt so homey. It was a far cry from the underground oval pods of my home asteroid.

The far side of Tameka’s house had a small deck and two lounging chairs turned to face some hills in the distant north. The planet’s twin moons hung low on the horizon, picking up blue and green shadows from the sky auroras.

I slung my butt in a chair, not at all sure I wanted to be sitting yet. It felt good enough, so I stayed.

Tameka took a seat beside me and fished around in a bucket at the side of her chair. “So what kind of name is Lakisha Drinkwater?”

Apparently, the strange personal interrogation wasn’t over yet, but I was in a good enough mood to answer. “It’s the kind of name you get when your mom’s got Jamaican blood and your dad’s sixth-generation space Cheyenne.”

Her cider bottle stopped halfway to anywhere useful. “You haven’t exactly got the coloring for that mix of bloodlines.”

That was putting it politely. I was pale blonde Scandinavian, through and through. But whoever might have given birth to me, it was a couple of miners who had brought me to the only home my child self remembered. “My adoptive parents found me in an evac pod on the side of a crater.” With a woman dead in the junker ship wreckage beside me, one of the unregistereds that collected space scrap to sell for barely enough to fuel their vessels. Ship systems, barely functional even before the crash, had routed all remaining oxygen to the evac pod and the week-old baby inside it. The Federation had been duly informed, but there were no living relatives, no one to claim me. It was a common enough story in the farther reaches of the galaxy. So I’d gone from space-junker brat to mining-rock brat.

“I’m sorry,” said Tameka quietly. “It was well done of them to take you in.”

I shrugged. “They were miners, and another pair of hands was always useful.” I said it without rancor—they’d been decent enough parents, they just hadn’t had any idea what to do with their blonde wild child.

She inclined her head in the dark. “Destiny has tossed you around some.”

It had—and the two most pivotal events in my life had come when someone had crashed a tin can into a rock. I was damn glad my butt was no longer sitting in one. “I grow where I’m planted.” Or I’d learned to, anyhow. With a lot of very patient help.

“Good.” Tameka was back to drinking her cider. “We respect hard-won roots out here.”

The colony planets usually did. It hadn’t been any different back on the mining asteroid—we’d assumed that anyone who’d grown up on one of the pampered inner planets was soft. I’d met enough of those people since to have changed my impressions somewhat, but they definitely hardened up a little differently.

The show in the sky was getting more serene, but no less enthralling. “Does it do this often?”

“An hour or two most nights.”

Score one for the boondocks. A quick yellow light flashed to the far left of my view. “Meteorite?”

“Nope. Visitor.” My host squinted at the night sky. “Coming from the direction of the Lovatts’.”

She didn’t sound surprised. “Do they usually just hop on over for a visit?”

“Often enough.” She smiled. “The Inheritor appreciates a good cider.”

I tried to imagine a ruler of one of the inner planets dropping by for a bottle of homebrew—or Yesenia, for that matter. They’d likely give someone heart failure.

“I don’t think this is Emelio, however.” Tameka was still watching the light trail approaching from the west. “He drives like a man with a lot of responsibility. This must be Evgenia.”

The GooglePlex had known very little other than that she existed. “Got a quick download on her?”

The retired Fixer chuckled. “I’ve been here going on twenty-five years now, and I don’t even begin to pretend I’ve got Evgenia figured out. She’s part farmer’s daughter, part voodoo priestess, part Scottish laird.”

I wasn’t even sure what all those things were. “Sounds complicated.”

“She is.” A big pause as we both watched the incoming vehicle. “She’s smart and fierce, and she loves her son dearly. And she’s happiest when she’s on a battlefront.”

That was a whole heap more intel than I’d expected to get—and not at all reassuring. I took a cue from my host and stayed in my chair, watching as the b-pod landed with a flourish on a small circle of shorn grass and the lights flickered out.

Moments later, a woman the size of a small mountain climbed out and called over to the patio. “Evening, Tameka. I hear you have company.”

“You heard right.” Tameka fished again in the bucket beside her chair and made no move to get up. “Can I offer you a cider?”

“Is this the local stuff, or your special supply?”

My host chuckled. “You’ll have to drink to find out.”

The woman had reached our little deck, and I decided that however informal Tameka might consider the visit, I didn’t want to meet this encounter lying down. I levered myself out of the lounging chair and held out a hand. “I’m Kish Drinkwater, Singer. Nice to meet you.”

“Evgenia Lovatt, first and only wife of the Inheritor, if the man knows what’s good for him.”

I suspected that if he didn’t, she’d make ship’s grease out of him. “I’ve heard he’s a smart man.”

She snorted and took the bottle of cider Tameka held out. “I was hoping you’d be smart enough to ignore his request and stay home.”

I hadn’t been aware he’d made one until I arrived, but I wasn’t about to say so. “Fixers go where we’re sent.”

“Just a cog in a wheel, are you?” She eyed me with an air of vague disdain. “I told Emelio we could make this happen without interference from some wisp of a girl who doesn’t know a scythe from a winnower.”

That was the kind of crap I couldn’t take lying down, even if I didn’t have the foggiest idea what a winnower was. “I’m a wisp of a girl who could spend the next ten seconds convincing you to strip naked and poop golden eggs.” Or I could if KarmaCorp’s ethics weren’t quite so pesky.

Tameka nearly choked on her cider.

Evgenia just raised an eyebrow. “Got some spunk in there, do you?”

“My mother had some other names for it.”

That almost got a smile. “I imagine.”

I was exhausted, but not enough to miss the data she was sending me. She might not like my presence here, but it didn’t sound like she objected to my mission’s endpoint. Which might well mean she had caused its necessity—I imagined that her son was well-squished under his mother’s thumb, but maybe Janelle Brooker didn’t like getting pushed around.

Smart women had dug in their feet with far less cause.

My job might well be to get Evgenia out of the way. I took a sip of my cider and carefully bounced a subsonic pitch at the immense woman who was currently sizing me up. When the resonances returned, even my Talent had the sense to wince. The lowest base note I’d ever heard, and rock solid to boot.

Evgenia would be about as easy to influence as an intergalactic battle cruiser. Doable, but painful as hell. I watched as she turned to make small talk with my host and hoped like heck it wouldn’t come to that.

I
n an act
of morning obstinance that my mother would have recognized well, I’d decided to go meet Janelle Brooker first, rather than do the politically prudent thing and introduce myself to the Lovatts’ doormat of a son.

That bit of fun could wait for later.

I rolled Tameka’s bubblepod in a sweet lefthand bank, happy as sin to be driving. Most Fixers could barely manage the basics of flying a private vehicle, but I’d grown up on a digger rock, and a pilot’s daughter to boot. I’d handled our old and jangly b-pod before I’d lost my front teeth. I took one last three-sixty for fun and because I could, and then headed toward the sprawling angles of the building that, according to my host’s directions, housed the woman who’d so far managed to evade the wishes of both the man who ran her planet and his gladiator wife.

Three or four people looked up and waved in friendly fashion, and all of them seemed to be pointing me toward a stand of trees left of the house. I spied a landing circle just past the trees and dropped the hover feet. The b-pod floated into an effortless landing that would hopefully impress the natives and keep Tameka from revoking my flying privileges. It had taken some fast talking and a quick demo to get her to lend me Nijinsky at all.

By the time I’d put the b-pod into stationary, a young woman had made her way over to the edge of the landing circle. She watched me steadily as I climbed out and planted my feet on the ground. I waved what I hoped looked like a friendly hello. She had lots of reasons not to like me. “Good morning—you must be Janelle Brooker.”

“Am.” She smiled. “And you must be Lakisha Drinkwater, the quadrant’s most talked-about Singer at the ripe old age of twenty-five.”

Apparently, the GooglePlex had been forthcoming—and full of the usual lies and half-truths. “People need more to talk about. And everyone calls me Kish.”

She smiled again. “I’m guessing most call you Singer, but Kish will do just fine.” She held up her hand, two red fruits on her palm. “Ever had an apple?”

My mouth was already watering. “I have, but it’s an experience I’m really happy to repeat.” Assuming it wasn’t poisoned—I knew my fairy tales well enough, and it was positively weird that Janelle was being so friendly. “Why are you being so nice?”

Her laugh was friendly and open, and teased at my Talent as she tossed an apple my way. “I’m nice to most people. We’ve got a whole orchard of apples that are ripe and ready, so help yourself any time you like.”

Generosity was obviously a way of life here. I tried to respond in kind as best as I could. “My roommate back on Stardust Prime likes to bake pies.”

Janelle’s eyes lit up. “Any chance you could get a recipe? Dad’s got plenty of good ones to trade.”

Recipes were often better galactic currency than money—and if pie instructions would buy me some Brooker goodwill, I’d deliver them by the tablet full. “I’d be happy to hook the two of them up.”

“It’ll have to be in a few days. My parents are on Andromethius visiting my brother and my new baby niece. I’m holding down the fort.”

Andromethius was an outpost colony on the other side of the quadrant. I debated, and then raised an eyebrow at the woman walking under the trees beside me. “That sounds like pretty convenient timing.”

She offered a small smile up at a tree. “I wondered if you’d pick that up.”

It wasn’t the only thing I was picking up. My Talent was in gear and collecting first impressions—and underneath Janelle’s bright and friendly exterior rode some serious steel. I’d found at least some of the spine I’d been sent to bend. “I would imagine the Inheritor invited me here at a time when he thought my work would be most likely to succeed.” Even strong people wither faster in isolation.

Her shoulders hitched upward a fraction. “Emelio Lovatt is a smart man.”

There was a really loud thought she wasn’t saying. “But?”

Janelle chuckled and took a bite of her apple. “But he doesn’t understand family nearly as well as he thinks he does.”

I contemplated that for a while as I made sure not a drop of the sharp and sweet apple juice missed my mouth. “His family isn’t exactly typical.”

She raised a quirky eyebrow and grinned. “I take it you’ve met Evgenia.”

To put it mildly. “She flew into Tameka’s place last evening for a visit.”

A second eyebrow quirk. “Interesting.”

That word could mean a thousand different things.

Janelle hesitated a moment. “Don’t underestimate her. She’s more than just her bluster—some of her best moves are the ones she makes quietly while everyone’s watching the dust of whatever drama she’s just created.”

That was also interesting, especially considering the source—and not a vibe I’d picked up from my first short encounter with Evgenia. “Not as straightforward as she appears?”

“She’s married to an Inheritor.”

That could make her anything from arm decoration to the power behind the throne. “Does she wear the pants in the family?”

Janelle nearly choked on her apple. “I take it you haven’t met Emelio yet.”

I was going to stuff the KarmaCorp briefing file up Yesenia’s compost valve when I got back to Stardust Prime. “I take it he’s interesting too.”

She made a wry face. “Very. They’re a hell of a couple.”

I wasn’t at all sure of Janelle’s motives at the moment, but I appreciated the data. “They’re a couple who want you married to their only son.”

She took a bite of her apple. “Yes.”

The friendly vibe was still there—but it walked beside a wary one. “I assume you try to stay out of their way?”

“No.”

In that one word, I finally saw on the surface what my Talent had sensed underneath. Steel, and not so hidden anymore. I raised an eyebrow of my own. “Why not?” I looked around at the sweeping grasslands that bordered the apple orchard. “It’s a big planet.”

“It is.” Janelle gazed out at the horizon for a while, a woman entirely comfortable with what was hers. “But I don’t ever intend to give those two the impression I might be herdable.”

My own Song resonated, loudly. If my mission had been collecting friends on backwater planets, I’d be set. Instead, I’d been sent to bend the will of this smart, articulate, independent woman to what the StarReaders had decided was her appropriate destiny.

Which I wasn’t exactly feeling inclined to do. She’d fed me an apple, dammit.

She glanced over at me. “I assume you got sent to see if I could be persuaded to drop my knickers and hop into Devan’s lap.”

I nearly snorted apple juice out my nose. BroThree didn’t grow people who beat around the bush. Fortunately, neither did digger rocks. “Yeah, I was.”

She was looking at me straight on now. “Could you do it?”

That was one of those questions we weren’t supposed to answer. “Yeah.” I shrugged. “I could get you in his lap, anyhow. The knicker dropping would be up to you.” KarmaCorp had their ethical lines, and I had mine, and at least in Yesenia’s corner of the galaxy, the two were pretty much in agreement.

“Good to know.”

One kind of honesty deserved another. “Is there a reason you aren’t already in his lap?”

Her chuckle was melodic, light, and wry. “You mean besides my general objection to being a cog in someone else’s plans?”

I winced. Fixers were often accused of being cog greasers, and our accusers weren’t wrong. “Yeah, besides that.” I needed the more personal objections, whatever they were. “Is he ugly, obnoxious, weak, short?”

“No.” She smiled. “Devan’s not any of those things.”

I was surprised at the clear affection in her tone and in her eyes. “You like him.”

“I do.” Janelle was back to watching her grasslands, voice flat and calm. “But I don’t love him in any kind of romantic sense, I don’t imagine that will change, and I’m not some feudal princess who can be ordered to marry a guy to save the empire.”

There were worlds like that in the Federation, ones that pampered their royals thoroughly and gave them very little in the way of choices. That seemed at deep odds with what I saw when I looked out at the grasslands, though. This planet had been shaped by souls who knew freedom well.

She shrugged and tossed her apple core into a patch of curly fronds. “Besides, I’m in no hurry to pair up with anyone. I have a good life and a busy one, and from what I can gather, men are a lot of work.”

Amen to that. Her words rang true with my Talent, too—it wasn’t Devan in particular she objected to, but the plan to marry her off in general. Which raised an obvious question that I still didn’t have a satisfactory answer to. It was time to figure out more of why I’d really been sent to BroThree. “So there’s one thing I’m not at all clear on.”

She glanced at me, amused. “Only one?”

Smart and funny. “For the moment. Why are some people so determined that the two of you get hitched?” It was the politest way I could think of to ask why KarmaCorp was sticking their nose into the internal politics of some backwater planet. She wouldn’t know all the answers—but she likely knew more than I did.

She snorted. “You should ask them.”

I intended to. “You’re smart, you have your eyes open, and you’ve lived here your whole life. I’ve been here sixteen hours. Help me out.”

“Only if you promise not to mess with my knickers.”

That much I could promise—and only that much. “Done.”

“How much do you know about colony planets?”

Enough to know they all had a different story. “Assume I’m a dumb flatlander from one of the inner worlds.”

She grinned. “They don’t call themselves dumb flatlanders.”

Not usually. “I grew up on a digger rock.”

“Huh.” Her head tilted to the side, thinking. “I don’t know much about mining asteroids—how do they get started?”

A lot more simply than most colonies. “Some poor schmucks get shipped to a cold rock with a bunch of digging tools. The ones who figure out how to use the tools fastest usually end up in charge. If you’re lucky, they’re good people.”

“Was your rock lucky?” Janelle stuck her hands in her pockets, voice carefully casual.

I wondered what she’d heard. “Close enough.”

“Good.” She nodded, back to watching her grasslands. It seemed like a fairly major occupation here. “It’s not all that different on a colony planet. A few extended families get shipped in to get things started.”

That much they taught even in digger grade school. “The Founders.” Seeds of a new society.

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “If you’re lucky, they’re good people.”

Ah. “Things got sticky here?”

“A nasty virus cropped up, killed a quarter of the colonists before the medicals found a cure.” Her lips pursed. “And a couple of families on the rampage killed another quarter before they got stopped.”

The fear of imminent death on a lonely rock didn’t bring out the best in everyone. “What happened?”

“My grandfather led the colonists who stopped the rampage. He was also the guy who found the cure—he was just a tech, but the virus had wiped out most of the medical team.”

That was the kind of thing that would inspire some pretty solid loyalty. “Interesting blood running in your veins.” She hadn’t been picked at random for this marriage deal.

She smiled wryly. “It gets more interesting. My grandfather convinced my grandmother to run off with him to settle here. Her father was Jackson Douglas’s youngest brother.”

The Saskatchewan farming clan that had explored and mapped half the quadrant. Galactic royalty, and another reason the power structure on this planet was a lot less straightforward than it seemed. I looked over at Janelle, feeling my way through the shifting melody line of the words she’d said, and the ones she hadn’t. “So who really runs this place?” Inheritors were supposed to rule their planets—but I was looking at the bright, ambitious, driven granddaughter of the man who had pulled BroThree out of self-destruct.

Janelle smiled and shrugged. “That depends a lot on who you ask. The Lovatts have the ear of the Federation Council.”

Galactic royalty had thumbed their noses at local rulers before, and at the Commonwealth Council for that matter. Competing seats of power were inherently messy and could send ripples far out into the galaxy. That was the kind of reason that could easily mobilize KarmaCorp troops. This mission wasn’t about a marriage—it was about a merger. “So people figure you and Devan marrying each other stabilizes things here.”

She made a face. “Do things seem unstable to you?”

They didn’t, but I’d only been here sixteen hours. And KarmaCorp often targeted latent instability—ripples that hadn’t happened yet. “If it would help your planet, would you marry him?” That was walking awfully close to unbendable lines with an Ears Only file, but I needed to know what levers I had to work with. What mattered to Janelle Brooker.

She was watching me carefully. “You’re very good at your job, aren’t you?”

I was, but I didn’t think she was handing me a compliment. “I’m just saying that there might be more than your personal happiness at stake.” And colonists were carefully selected to put the greater good first, even on a planet that seemed as freedom bound as this one.

“There might be.” She shrugged. “There often is. But I can only go with what I know, and right now, nobody’s making a convincing case for changing my mind.”

I could hear her steadiness. Her solid trust in her own skills and her own choices, her belief that her destiny was her own to drive. I closed my eyes and sighed. Given the right data, Janelle Brooker would probably do what it was that StarReaders wanted. And for reasons only they knew—they’d decided not to provide it.

They’d sent me to do their dirty work instead.