Star Crossed

by C. Gockel

  Mairwen could have kicked herself. Dull security guards wouldn’t know what mister damage looked like. But she’d already opened her mouth, so she might as well go on. “Two shots, maybe more. Left arm, neck.”

  “Misters aren’t usually fatal.”

  She gently lifted the lapel and collar of the woman’s singed flatcoat to look underneath. “No, but a forceblade through the heart is.” The singed entry wound was unmistakable. The bottom half of the coat had soaked up most of the leaking blood.

  She saw the hint of a tattoo on the woman’s neck and pushed aside the shirt collar to see the rest of it, and the skulljack behind the ear she expected to find. Now the woman’s bruised hand and broken elbow made sense.

  “She did some damage to her attackers after the man—Leo—went down. Ex-Jumpers are hard to kill.”

  Jumpers were the military’s elite special forces under the Citizen Protection Service. Unsurprisingly, both La Plata’s divisions employed a large number of military veterans.

  She made one more discovery. Under the woman’s body, obscured by the blood-logged coat, were three identical, sealed packages of what looked like medical capsules, labeled with obscure identification codes and symbols. They were the source of the medicinal scent she’d caught a whiff of earlier. She shut down her sense of smell yet again, perturbed by how often that evening she’d been lured into breaking her own rules about using her extraordinary senses.

  “Three squibs under her, maybe pharma or blackmarket chem samples,” she told him.

  “Bag them.” She used her right forearm knife to lever each sample up and slide it into the bag he held open for her. She re-sheathed the flat blade and used her glove-protected fingertip to gently smear nearby blood around to obscure the shape of the void the packages had left.

  She started to ask if he needed anything else from the bodies, but momentarily froze when she realized the rhythm of sounds from the corridor outside had just changed. Wheels on plascrete, the click of motion-sensor lights blinking on, human voices. Very likely the Port Police. If she said nothing, and the police entered the warehouse before checking in, she and her co-workers would be caught in a locked room with two murder victims.

  Foxe noticed her hesitation and focused his eyes on hers. “What?”

  Unable to come up with a plausible excuse, she gave him the truth. “I thought I heard something.” It sounded lame. She looked toward the bay door they’d used twenty-three minutes before.

  He considered her words a moment, then put the evidence bag in his kit and started rapidly closing it up. “I think we’ve pushed our luck far enough. We’ll go out the back way with Velasco.”

  She quickly stripped off the gloves inside out and put them in her pants pocket, then grabbed her topcoat and the large kit he’d just finished sealing and slung its strap over her shoulder. He picked up his luggage and hustled toward the back of the warehouse. She kept pace right behind him through the jungle of shelves to where Velasco was standing. She was now glad he’d given her the wirekey earlier, because it meant they wouldn’t lose valuable seconds waiting for Velasco to produce it. As she edged in front of Foxe and headed straight for the door, voicecomm from the Port Police band sounded in her earwire.

  “Base two, six thirty at Centaurus Transport bay side. No visible breach. Harris is downloading the keycode now. Sitrep in ten.”

  Velasco heard it, too. “Shit, the police are out front. They’re getting the key now.”

  “We’re done. Let’s go,” said Foxe.

  Mairwen used the wirekey to open the door in the hope it wouldn’t trigger another alarm. She calculated they had maybe ten seconds before the police entered at the other end of the warehouse. They’d be as unpleasantly surprised by the bodies as Foxe and Velasco had been. All in all, no one was going to be happy that night.

  Once Foxe and Velasco were through the door, she sealed it and put the wirekey in her pocket, while turning up her senses to make sure more company wasn’t coming. Foxe seemed all right, but Velasco’s shallow breathing and fast heart rate said he was headed toward panic again.

  She took the lead to get them walking fast down the corridor to get Velasco to put some of his adrenalin to good use. She heard a distant grav sled coming their way. She looked for and found the corridor split and led them into the side hall. She wanted to avoid triggering the motion sensors for the hallway lights, so she slowed to a stop after a few steps, as if adjusting the shoulder strap.

  Velasco’s breathing was heavy, but he seemed to be in better control of himself now. Foxe took the opportunity to call up a holo map of the spaceport on his percomp. She was relieved because it meant he could plot their path away from trouble and out of the spaceport. She’d already planned multiple escape routes the moment she’d learned the warehouse’s location, but that wasn’t the kind of initiative exhibited by unambitious night-shift guards.

  “Cart coming,” warned Foxe. Thankfully, his hearing was good enough to notice it. She felt him step close behind her. His unique, exotic scent teased her senses before she ruthlessly blocked it. What the hell was wrong with her?

  Foxe’s fingers brushed her arm. “Wait until it goes by,” he said. Velasco nodded. She nodded, too, but stepped away because she didn’t want Foxe touching her again. She put her coat on and sealed it, wishing it was lined with flexin armor.

  Even when he was quiet, the pressure of his breath and the resonance of his voice rumbled in her ears, provoking a desire to hear more. Very bad idea, the cautious part of her brain told her. She dulled all her senses to practically comatose levels. Her inexplicable and uncontrollable awareness of him was an unwelcome distraction, and dangerous. If the universe loved her, after tonight, she’d go back to her safe routine and never cross his trail again.

  2 * Planet: Rekoria * GDAT 3237.027 *

  LUKA FOXE SLUMPED in the company vehicle’s well-padded back seat and huddled in his greatcoat while rubbing his throbbing left temple. The cold was in his bones again. He was grateful he didn’t have to drive, because even at one in the morning, Etonver traffic was horrible. He’d have liked to blame the double full moons, but Etonver traffic was notoriously bad all 388 days of the year.

  He was deeply tired and stressed. Re-certifying his expert credential at High Court on Concordance Prime hadn’t been a vacation, and the last few hours had been a klústérfökk. The incompatibility of ship schedules and local times on two planets meant his body clock was haywire. He didn’t sleep well on small starships. He didn’t appreciate cramming five hours of reconstruction into twenty minutes. He didn’t like dodging the police. And he didn’t reconstruct murder scenes any more. Especially when one of the victims had been his best friend.

  The vivid impression of the bodies of his colleagues Adina Schmidt and Leo Balkovsky was still acid sharp. It had only taken seconds for the phantasms of how it could have happened to ooze up and contaminate his mind with bile. Even though he’d looked away quickly, he’d already seen and memorized too much. The talent-driven visions of possibilities had twisted his train of thought, until he could hardly think of anything else.

  It hadn’t always been that way. When he’d worked as a civilian for planetary police and military criminal investigation units, his hidden minder talent to see a crime scene and imagine the scenarios that fit had been useful. Involuntarily triggered by evidence of violence, but manageable. His final case changed everything. He’d hoped time and disuse would have made his talent easier to handle, but tonight proved that, if anything, his wayward ability was just as strong, and his ability to control it weaker.

  As tempting as it was just to doze, he needed to organize the data and send a preliminary report now, because he expected to flatline for at least eight hours once he got home. The only bright spot of the night was Morganthur. She’d been much more useful than his nominal assistant, Velasco. He was glad they'd dropped Velasco off first.

  “Assistant” was maybe too strong a word. La Plata policy required its investiga
tors to have partners, but no one else had the background to help him, and he was accustomed to working alone. They might have let the policy slide, except for his tendency to lose all track of time and space when he was deep in a reconstruction, even without using his talent. La Plata solved both problems by assigning him a personal security detail out of the Security Division. His assistant accompanied him, drove him places, provided another set of hands, and kept track of things. He’d gone through several of them. The latest was Velasco, who was comparatively reliable and affable, but talked a lot, was distracted by women, and was prone to fidgeting with anything nearby, including evidence.

  Luka hadn’t really noticed the difference until tonight, when Morganthur had stood quietly still for fifteen minutes straight. At the end, when the violent visions of what had happened to his friends in the warehouse were practically blinding him, she’d been a living, steady anchor to reality, even if she didn’t know it.

  That she’d been both unperturbed and competent in searching the bodies was a small miracle. Velasco would have thrown up on them.

  Luka encrypted his findings and the data clones Morganthur had retrieved and transmitted them to Seshulla Zheer’s attention. The net connection was secure, but it never hurt to use added security with sensitive data. He guessed Zheer, the president of the company, was now his boss until she found a replacement for Leo.

  Luka had never wanted a lead role, at least not until he regained control of his talent, and not while Leo enjoyed leading. Luka was numb now, as if he’d applied a slap-patch anesthetic to his emotions, but he knew the heartache would come. He was fluxed and wrung out at the same time. He swung his long legs across the seat and leaned back in the corner, trying to think of other things.

  Movement up front from Morganthur caught his eye. He’d initially taken her for ex-military, but she was too slight to be an ex-Jumper, and her movements were too unconventionally fluid for regular military standards. Her almost translucent pale skin, arctic-lake blue eyes, and spiked blonde hair should have been dulled by the gray and black of her company uniform and coat, but weren’t.

  Now that he had time to think about it, she was an enigma. She clearly had some intelligence behind the bland stolidity she wore like flexin armor. His other wayward talent, the one that let—or forced—him to see the essence of a person was curiously quiet around her.

  And maybe he was too tired to think straight, and maybe he shouldn’t be imagining intelligence or mystery in a woman he’d only met two hours ago.

  Just as his eyelids were drooping, he was surprised by a live ping from Zheer. He kept it earwire-only, rather than bring up the visual holo on his percomp.

  “Where are you?”

  “On the way home. I sent the data already.” His voice sounded as tired as he felt.

  “It’s already being analyzed. Stop at the office first and see me. LANR says you’re close.”

  LANR was the nickname for the planetwide Location and Navigation Reconnaissance system. Businesses paid to use it to track their commercial ground, water, and air vehicles anywhere on the planet surface. Up until that moment, Luka had thought it was a good idea.

  “It can’t wait?” He couldn’t keep the reluctance out of his tone.

  “No, but I’ll make it quick. You need to get any samples in custody, anyway.”

  He started to say there hadn’t been time to collect any, but then he remembered the unidentified squibs.

  “Fine,” he said, and disconnected. “Morganthur, we have to stop by the office first.”

  She nodded and changed lanes. She said nothing the rest of the trip, for which he was grateful.

  The executive suite of La Plata’s president was palatial, designed to simultaneously impress visitors and make them comfortable. Mairwen had never been there before and didn’t want to be there now. She suppressed the uncharacteristic urge to fidget.

  The meeting shouldn’t have involved her, and yet there she was, becoming a known name and face to the company president. Foxe wasn’t helping.

  “Getting the warehouse’s security cube was Morganthur’s idea,” he said, pointing her direction.

  Zheer reflexively glanced at her with a slightly raised eyebrow. Mairwen kept her expression blank.

  “Well done,” Zheer said, then returned her gaze to Foxe. “The analyst on call sent preliminary data trends to your display.”

  La Plata needed to hire a better photographer, because Zheer’s official picture didn’t do her any more justice than Foxe’s had. Zheer’s patrician features, deep black hair, and slanted eyes spoke of an Oriental heritage, and she had an undercurrent of strength. Her age was impossible to gauge. Despite the late hour, she was dressed as if for a board meeting.

  Although Mairwen sat and listened politely, underneath she was irritated. She didn’t care that Juno Viszla Casualty, La Plata’s insurance company client, was trying to get out of paying more claims from Centaurus Transport. She didn’t need to know that the murder victims, Balkovsky and Schmidt, had been looking into a series of thefts, or that they’d notified Zheer earlier that night they were investigating a fresh break-in at the warehouse. Foxe and Zheer should have let Mairwen wait with the vehicle so she could take Foxe home, then get back to her ordinary life. The life where low-level uniformed security guards worked the graveyard shift, and didn’t have meetings in plush executive offices that smelled of expensive coffee, leather, and a hint of smoke.

  Mairwen was glad Foxe was looking less distressed than he had in the warehouse. It made it easier to be annoyed with him now. At least he had the good sense not to talk about how she’d helped search the bodies, or that she knew what forceblades could do, or what mister wounds looked like. Her background records were as average and boring as she could make them, and she couldn’t afford the chance that someone smart might notice the discrepancy between her life on paper and her real life. Someone like Foxe, whose keen intuition was off the charts.

  Even though he was plainly exhausted and distracted, he’d quickly seen a pattern in the thefts that suggested the real targets were Loyduk Pharma vaccine shipments, not the shipping company itself. She wouldn’t be the least surprised if Foxe turned out to be a minder, some rare type that the Citizen Protection Service hadn’t yet found a way to exploit. Which made him all the more dangerous, beyond the fact that her physical and sensory awareness of him hadn’t faded. She needed to get away from him soon.

  Zheer opened her display, then gave Foxe a measured look.

  “I’m making you the lead for this. I know you don’t like working murder cases, but you were damn good at them. We just lost two top-notch investigators. La Plata will be picking up the tab for the murder investigation for now, but I’ll work on getting Juno Vizla Casualty to pay for it. Hand off or subcontract your other cases. I want you on this full time.”

  Foxe’s expression darkened, and Mairwen thought he might be about to object. Apparently so did Zheer, because she stood up and leaned in toward him, fists on the desk. “No arguments, Luka. I am beyond angry at whoever killed my friends and yours, or had it done. Go find them for us.”

  After a moment, Foxe nodded, his reluctance plain. “Is that all?”

  “For now,” she said, seemingly unperturbed by his icy tone. “Go home and get some rest.”

  She waved toward the door, signaling the end of the meeting. Foxe stood and grabbed his greatcoat, and Mairwen followed suit. She watched him surreptitiously, wondering how he was taking Zheer’s hardnosed attitude, which was less considerate of a star employee than Mairwen would have expected. More than anything, he looked stunned.

  She slung the strap of his small forensic kit over her shoulder as he grabbed his travel bag. He nodded thanks, but she wasn’t doing it for him. The faster he left the executive suite and the sooner she got him home, the faster she’d be out of sight and forgotten.

  The rest of Mairwen’s night didn’t go any better than it started. After driving Foxe to his townhouse and returning the vehi
cle to the office, she discovered the company garage was closed, as it was occasionally. Her neighborhood wasn’t safe for new-looking vehicles, even with upgraded security features, so she parked it near the office. Dispatch told her they had no orders on what she should do for the rest of her shift, so she took the metro home, where she cleaned her apartment, tried to read but couldn’t focus, and did reps on her force isolation exerciser until the garage reopened at seven.

  She parked the vehicle in an available stacker slot, then pinged dispatch that she was signing out. They pinged her back promptly with an order to report to her supervisor before leaving.

  Malamig’s office was on the first floor, near the La Plata building’s back entrance. He was only just hanging up his coat when she arrived.

  “Sit. What did you do last night?” His expression was mild, but his tone had an unexpected note of hostility. He sat at his immaculately arranged desk and aligned a cup of hot coffee with the edge of his deskcomp.

  “Should I file a report?” she asked. Her usual assignments required shift activity reports, so perhaps he was displeased because she hadn’t submitted one.

  “If Investigation Division wants one, they can request it through proper channels. It’s bad enough I have to special bill them so your salary doesn’t come out of my budget. Who did you talk to? I want to know why Investigation asked for you without going through me.”

  Good question, she thought, but if Malamig didn’t know, she doubted she’d ever learn the answer. She shrugged. “Dispatch sent orders.”

  “Yeah, I’ve already had a little chat with them.” His narrowed eyes and thinned lips told her dispatch probably hadn’t enjoyed the exchange. He leaned back and crossed his arms. His chair creaked as he rocked.

  “Company policy says I have to give you a compensatory day off, so I’ll have to take you off your current assignment.”

  “I’ll waive—” she began, but he interrupted.