by C. Gockel
“Too late; I’ve already changed the roster.” The creaking stopped, and he gave her a smug, almost taunting smile. “Next time Investigation calls you, maybe you’ll think to check with me first.”
Mairwen gathered his intent was to punish her for her part in what he perceived as a challenge to his authority, regardless of her blamelessness, and was using company policy as his weapon. Before she could answer, he leaned forward in his chair, feet stomping flat on the floor. “And don’t get any ideas of working for Foxe or Investigation Division, either. I say who goes, and it won’t be you ever again.”
That was the best thing he could have told her. She almost smiled. “Understood.”
He looked nonplussed by her response, as if he’d been expecting an argument, maybe even hoping for one. She’d heard rumors he enjoyed exercising power over his subordinates, but she hadn’t experienced it until today. She presumed it would soon blow over and he’d go back to ignoring her. To most of the night-shift employees, he was just a name on procedure memos.
He waved her away dismissively as he woke his deskcomp. “You can go. I’ll have dispatch ping you when I find a new assignment for you.”
She left his office and started to leave the building, then changed her mind. Since she was already there, with unexpected free time, she went to the Tech Division on the second floor and surrendered her percomp for updating. They loaned her a thincomp and told her to come back at eleven.
Since she didn’t have a vehicle, there was no point taking the forty-minute metro ride home, only to have to turn around and come back almost immediately. She’d get home and to bed later than usual, but she didn’t usually need much sleep.
With no office of her own, she cooled her heels in the employee lounge area and got caught up on some administrative work. She even wrote a shift report on the previous night, in case Malamig changed his mind. She didn’t want anything unusual in official records, so she phrased it to imply her role had been little more than chauffeur and door guard.
Fifty minutes later, a co-worker she remembered from previous assignments and more recent company meetings came in. The woman had a fruit cube and spoon in hand and plopped on the well-worn but durable couch. Beva Rienville, if Mairwen remembered the last name right, was a breezy, generously built woman with smooth chocolate skin and a lilting accent that Mairwen recognized as a French variant. Beva was the most congenial, sociable person Mairwen had ever met on the night shift, or anywhere else, for that matter. Beva insisted on using first names immediately whenever she met anyone.
“Mairwen Morganthur! Comment vas? How are you? Don’t see you in the office much, at least during daylight hours.”
Clearly Beva had a better social memory than Mairwen, who needed sensory cues, usually scent or sound, to remember people’s names. Keeping her extraordinary senses dulled to near unconscious levels had its disadvantages.
“No,” agreed Mairwen.
“Still like working in the field?”
At Mairwen’s nod, Beva smiled. “Good for you. I never looked good in the uniform like you do, and I got tired of them forgetting I was even on the planet. Besides, my wife wanted me home on time, and I missed our kids. And now I’m up for a promotion.” She took a bite of yellow fruit. “Mind you, office work has its downside. Tech is upgrading the network, and half the time, we may as well have dumb kiosks at our desks.” She rolled her eyes. “Hard to get work done when you can’t get to your work, savez? Know what I mean?”
“Yes,” said Mairwen. Should she say something else? She’d never gotten the hang of chatting.
“Does it smell like sour coconut in here to you?”
“I have a poor sense of smell,” said Mairwen, a lie she’d told so often she almost believed it herself.
“Probably Junnila’s breakfast curry again. And speaking of deadly,” she said with a smile at her own joke, “did you see in the news where the NVP pandemic might be hitting Rekoria in the next couple of months? If it does, I’m not coming into the office again until they find a frellin’ cure. They can fire my grand cul. No job is worth the chance one of my co-workers might bring it in for ‘show and share.’”
Mairwen couldn’t think of anything to say to that, but Beva didn’t seem to mind. She continued her meandering conversational monologue another nine minutes, content with Mairwen’s willingness to listen and respond occasionally.
After Beva left, Mairwen spent some time reading intergalactic news, which she’d been lax in keeping up with because it never changed much. The Central Galactic Concordance now had 506 member planets, and three new frontier planet candidates. Concordance Command Space Division was again cracking down on jack crews who preyed on space freighters, stations, and spaceports. A sensational non-fiction publication about a horrific crime last year continued to break sales records. A Citizen Protection Service proposal to require a round of additional minder skills testing for all citizens at age twenty-one was voted down by the High Council. A representative for the Concordance Ministry of Health assured the public that a vaccine against NVP 70 was one of their top priorities, and the public mustn’t panic.
Mairwen snorted at that last item. If Beva’s declaration was anything to go by, the ministry was trying to load ground cargo on a ship that had already gone interstellar transit.
Unaccustomed to sitting for long, Mairwen killed more time by taking a walk around the block twice, despite the blustery autumn wind. She regretted that her uniform and boots weren’t appropriate attire for using the company gym or going for a short run.
When she finally traded the thincomp for her updated percomp near lunchtime, Tech apologized for how long it had taken, what with network contractors under foot and getting in everyone’s way. She stuffed the percomp in her topcoat pocket and headed downstairs to the northeast exit, which was closer to the neighborhood metro station. If she was lucky, she’d be home and in bed in an hour.
She heard her name called just as she got to the door. She suppressed a sigh as she turned and walked back down the hall to where Malamig stood outside his office door.
He was glaring at her, red-faced. “Did you tell Investigation Division that you were available?”
This was not good. “No, I did not.”
Malamig looked taken aback by the strength of her denial. “Well, somebody did. They want you again tomorrow. Day shift security detail for Foxe.” His resentment was palpable.
She was sorely tempted to refuse the assignment, but doing so would give Malamig something to use against her later, and maybe even cause Foxe to come looking for her.
“Where and when?” She knew it’d been a colossal mistake to feel sorry for Foxe and help him last night. Nothing good ever came from good deeds.
“Check your percomp,” Malamig huffed. “They copied you on the order directly.” Another breach in protocol, apparently. He poked a crooked finger toward her face. “Don’t get used to this. You haven’t earned it. Security Division is the financial engine of this company. Investigation has no right to poach my staff.”
He dismissed her and slammed his office door shut.
Late that evening, after a few hours’ sleep and a longer run than she’d planned because she needed it, Mairwen paced in her small apartment. She was full of resentment and other, less easily identifiable emotions. She regretted that she didn’t need as much sleep as other people, because it gave her time to brood.
She hoped Malamig got what he wanted. He was a hidebound jerk, but he managed the Security Division schedule and assignments well, and he usually ignored her. Besides, if he got the director’s position that he’d reportedly been bragging that he was toplisted for, he’d no longer be her problem.
Foxe was another matter. To quote a saying she’d once heard, he was nine yards of trouble.
Eleven hours from now, she was to check out a company vehicle and meet Foxe at the office, then accompany him wherever he wanted to go. She didn’t want to be his company. She didn’t even want to be in enclosed spaces wit
h him, where the sounds and scents of him were too intense. He was dangerously smart and dangerously… tempting. She’d caught herself entertaining idle thoughts of how it would feel to touch his skin, or what his mouth would taste like. It was an involuntary and inconvenient hormonal response to his presence. She’d seen it in others, and read about it, but it was the first time she’d experienced anything like it herself.
She supposed she should be grateful to regain that small bit of normality. It had been four years since she escaped from the Citizen Protection Service, but they’d had nineteen years to burn out most of her humanity. They’d given her the ability and knowledge to survive and succeed in the harshest of conditions, but no useful skills to do ordinary, civilized things, such as have a friendly conversation. Much less how to navigate attraction.
Exasperation coursed through her. She’d only spent a combined total of about three hours with Luka Foxe, but thanks to her suddenly runaway senses, she already knew the cadence of his walk, the timbre of his voice, the smell of his soap. She liked that he had a brain and knew how to use it, but it made her vulnerable to his powerful intuition. If anyone could uncover her secrets, he could, and it would likely get her killed.
Since her sex drive was going to wake from the dead whether she wanted it to or not, why couldn’t it have picked a nice, stupid person?
The only safe course, she finally decided, was to do the job asked of her but nothing more. Foxe would conclude she was useless to him and send her back to the Security Division. Malamig would be happy to get his way, and Mairwen could go back to the safe, quiet anonymity of the night shift, and forget how proximity to Foxe made her feel.
3 * Planet: Rekoria * GDAT 3237.028 *
LUKA HADN'T EXPECTED to be back at the planetary spaceport quite so soon, and not in the middle of a workday. The huge port was teeming with crowds of people, some in a hurry to get somewhere, some doing their jobs, some waiting. He’d never cared for crowds, and especially not since his talent had flared. More than half the people were carrying one or more weapons in holsters, rigs, sheaths, and pockets, which he still wasn’t used to even after a year of living in Etonver. The city didn’t even require biometric safeties on any of them.
His eventual destination was the food court commons, the public place where the informant wanted to meet. The unlooked-for informant that Zheer had sent him to meet, in Leo Balkovsky’s place.
For now, he stood on the pedestrian bridge above to get the lay of the land. Morganthur stood quietly to the side and a couple of paces behind him, as had been her habit so far. Her dark green civilian suit, a long jacket over a buttoned shirt and pants, didn’t fit perfectly, so she probably bought it set-sized instead of from an autotailor. He wondered if she didn’t have the money or didn’t care. At least it and her light overcoat concealed any weapons she might be carrying besides the wrist knife he’d seen at the warehouse. Her expression and body stance were neutral, but he had the feeling she was very aware of her surroundings.
He hadn’t planned on bringing Morganthur today, except he’d been in a bloody-minded mood the day before. He’d mostly forgotten about her after the dead-of-night meeting when Zheer had forced him into leading the case. He owed Zheer for giving him a job and working around his… eccentricities. If he really wanted off the hook, he’d have to tell her the truth about his talent, and he wasn’t willing to take the chance that she’d consider him impaired. The case was too important to give to anyone else. Zheer knew he’d been a lead investigator before, and had the record to prove it. La Plata’s top investigator had been Leo Balkovsky, a mid-level finder who made it out of the Minder Corps of the Citizen Protection Service more or less sane, but he’d been gutted like a fish in the Centaurus warehouse. Luka missed Leo’s good-natured teasing and confident leadership with painful intensity.
After what had happened at the warehouse, Luka hadn’t slept well and had gone into work early. He’d been too restless to work in his office, so he’d decamped to a nearby conference room, as he sometimes did when he needed room to pace. Vengeance fantasies kept infiltrating his rational thought processes, and the movement helped him stay focused. He’d heard Velasco looking for him, but hadn’t been in the mood to deal with him. Then he’d heard another voice, and it became apparent that Velasco had run into Malamig, the scheduling manager from Security Division. Luka wouldn’t have eavesdropped if he hadn’t heard his own name.
“…pick Morganthur to drive me and Foxe last night?” asked Velasco.
“Don’t ask me,” replied Malamig with evident antipathy. “Investigation Division chose her from my roster. Something about availability and location. Why, did she screw up?”
“No, she didn’t do anything except drive and stand around. Wouldn’t talk to either of us. Typical graveyard shifter—no social skills whatsoever.” He snorted. “Once I saw her in the light, I remembered meeting her a few months ago. Tall, skinny blondes with little titties aren’t my type.” Some men remembered women’s names, faces, or jobs; Velasco remembered their bodies. “I mean, Foxe is weird and all, but he’s got nothing on her. Dekkil says she always carries two or three knives.”
“She’s stupid, and she doesn’t know how to cooperate,” said Malamig with vitriol. Luka wondered what she’d done to piss off her boss. Perhaps she’d turned him down for sex. If so, Luka’s estimation of her taste rose a couple of notches.
“You better be careful,” continued Malamig. “She might be willing to spread for Foxe to get your job, and then you’ll be back in patrol doing shift work again.”
Velasco laughed. “I’m not worried. Foxe is oblivious to women, and even if he wasn’t, I doubt he goes for zero-witted or hostile.”
The conversation had ended a minute later, with Malamig headed back to his office and Velasco leaving for parts unknown.
If they hadn’t mentioned Morganthur’s name, Luka would never have guessed they’d been talking about the same quiet, unexpectedly competent woman who’d helped him in the warehouse. Even if she was uncooperative or hostile, which he highly doubted, she’d been immediately more useful than Velasco. He didn’t care what either Velasco or Malamig thought of him personally, but oddly, he'd found himself annoyed on Morganthur’s behalf.
So Luka had given in to malicious impulse and sent a request to Zheer for Morganthur to accompany him the next day to the meeting. An informant with information about the case just dropping in from the sky still felt entirely too convenient. He firmly told himself he’d asked for Morganthur because he hated to see good talent to go waste, and definitely not because, for the first time in a couple of years, he was attracted to someone—a lithe, cheetah-slim woman with hidden depths.
“Ten minutes.”
Her low-pitched, slightly raspy voice brought him back to the present. He’d asked her to give him a countdown at five-minute intervals, in case he got distracted by his talent or violent memories. He hadn’t, but only because he’d been distracted by thinking about her. He gave himself a mental shake to focus on the job at hand.
“Showtime, I guess.”
He was still bothered by this meeting. Even if his talent was unpredictable, his intuition was as good as ever, and it was pulsing warning pings.
They rode the moving stairs to the floor below and threaded through the thinning lunchtime crowd to the prearranged meeting place under the giant clock. It displayed galactic coordinated date and time, local time, and similar data for a dozen popular destination cities on Rekoria and other planets. The murmurs of dozens of languages made a sea of sound. Luka snagged an abandoned tray so he wouldn’t look out of place and found an empty table. Morganthur had already drifted away, making their connection less obvious. The informant knew what he looked like, so all he had to do was wait to be found.
It didn’t take long. An older, round-faced, olive-skinned woman with gray-streaked black hair, wearing the uniform of a spaceport maintenance worker, slipped into the chair opposite his. She was trying to play it cool, but her ey
es darted around too often.
“Lukasz Foxe?” She mangled the pronunciation of his first name. Most people did.
When he nodded, she said, “I’m Sandy Green.”
Almost certainly not her name, but he understood her caution.
“Call me Luka. Pleased to meet you,” he said, not as warmly as he’d intended. He was liking this situation less and less. It felt like a setup, although he didn’t know who the target was. “I understand you have some data you’re willing to share?”
Green pushed her hair back behind her ear in a nervous gesture. “Do you work with Balkovsky? He’s who I talked to.”
“He’s unavailable at the moment.” If she didn’t know Leo was dead, Luka wasn’t going to be the one to tell her. “Your message said you wanted to talk immediately. You’re moving soon?”
“I’m being transferred,” she said, and her flat tone hinted she wasn’t happy about it. She leaned closer and said more quietly, “Look, Balkovsky promised me a reward if I told him who’s been after Centaurus Transport.”
Luka showed more surprise than he felt. Greed was so dependable. “This is the first I’ve heard of it. I’d have to run it by the office.”
“Carajo, don’t you people even talk to one another?” Green’s expression hardened in annoyance.
Luka made a placating gesture. “If your information is good, I think we can work something out. How much did you have in mind?”
She named a figure that raised his eyebrows. Small ocean yachts could be bought for less.
“I’m the one taking a chance here,” she said defensively. “He’ll kill me if he finds out I’m talking to you.”
She painted a picture of a man with a grudge because Centaurus Transport’s poor service had cost him his business, his home, and eventually his family. She was saying all the right things, but Luka thought it felt too easy, too believable. On the other hand, it could be true and he could be twisting himself with patterns that didn’t exist. He wasn’t a finder like Leo, able to extrapolate truths from unconnected, random data.