Wanted and Wired

by Vivien Jackson

  Heron might have agreed to harbor her, even protect her, but he damn sure wasn’t going to let her roll his best friend into her master plan.

  Yoink looked from Heron to Kellen, sat back on the dirt, and licked herself.

  “Of course I will,” said Heron. He had come up here intending to lure his friend back down to supper, back into the embrace of friends and family and warmth. But maybe Kellen wasn’t ready for that.

  A breeze kicked up over the desert, making the spires sway. The vicuña made a click noise, like a snap on its soft palate, and Kellen responded with a pet on the head. Yoink growled.

  Heron might not want to admit it, but something much worse than winter was coming. He only hoped his haven would be ready.

  Order Vivien Jackson’s next book

  in the Tether series

  Perfect Gravity

  On sale November 2017

  Acknowledgments

  Most books take a village. Feels like this one took a metropolis. First, thank you to my subject matter experts: Allen Jackson, Nicole Minsk, Christa Paige, Paula d’Etcheverry, Sloane Calder, and Claudia Renard. Only you and I know the mistakes you have saved me from making in public.

  Also, huge thanks to Crit Groups (big and little), DDs, Skyler White, and the Sourcebooks team for craft and biz help through every step of this process.

  Finally, this book would be in a drawer if not for the work of my agent, Holly Root, and editor, Cat Clyne. Superheroes like y’all totally deserve origin stories and capes.

  About the Author

  Vivien Jackson writes fantastical, futuristic, down-home salacious kissery. After being told at the age of seven she could not marry Han Solo because he wasn’t a real person, she devoted her life to creating worlds where, goldarnit, she could marry anybody she wanted. And she could wield a blaster doing it. A devoted Whovian Browncoat Sindarin gamer, she has a degree in English, which means she’s read gobs of stuff in that language and is always up for a casual lit-crit of the Fallout universe. She has been known to write limericks about old Gondor. With her similarly geeky partner, children, and hairy little pets, she lives in Austin, Texas. She’d love to hear from you: www.vivienjackson.com.

  Here’s a sneak peek at book two in Vivien Jackson’s Tether series

  PERFECT GRAVITY

  If the universe granted druthers, Kellen Hockley would’ve asked to spend this fine autumn evening out riding fences. Or patching up barb-tangled bovines, soothing them to health. Or catching the blast furnace of a Texas summer right in the face. Having a wire enema. Facing a plasma-equipped drone firing squad. Because, fact was, he’d rather be anywhere than where he was: on a space station that smelled like acetone, hot metal, and feet.

  Fixing to have the hands-down worst conversation of his life with the woman he once considered the love of it.

  He took a steadying breath and stepped off the space elevator. His guts fell about twenty meters, and he struggled against the urge to vomit. The crazy-ass robot queen who ran this station tried hard to make it stable when she geosynched—he knew she tried—but if there was one thing he’d learned in the years since continental unification and the general shitification of things down on the surface, stability of any kind was transient. Was best to close your eyes, clamp your teeth, and wait for the ache to pass.

  He told the station where he was headed and running lights on the floor breadcrumbed his path down one of the tube-like corridors. He was supposed to follow them, and he did for a couple steps, then stopped. Couldn’t say why, other than he felt like he was going to his own personal goddamn guillotine. His body wanted to run.

  “Easy there, cowboy.” The voice moved along his skull, from back to front, like a sunburn setting in, giving him chills. It didn’t have a visible body, that voice. It came out of thin, station-scrubbed air.

  “You gotta stop jailbreaking, Chloe,” he chided low, under his breath. “If authorities found you out in the wild, we’d all be hunted down.”

  “Like twelve-point bucks in deer season!” she replied.

  Chloe wasn’t a real girl. She wasn’t a real anything, just a collection of nanites that had gotten together, formed a consciousness, and decided to imitate human living. She had a hard time holding her visible form together, but even in her current dispersed state, there were sure to be scrubbers that’d sense her presence on this station. Human eyes might not be able to see her, but machines were a whole ’nother thing. And there were laws against things like Chloe.

  “We don’t need trouble,” he reminded her. “So skedaddle on back to the plane. Will meet you there tomorrow.”

  “More trouble, you mean? Because I heard Heron quantify our current circumstances in metric shitloads of trouble.”

  Kellen smiled in spite of his anxiety. “Weight’s about right.”

  He and Chloe both lived and worked as part of a team that rescued things, people, and animals at high risk of being destroyed on this planet full of chaos. When the machines of human conflict started rolling, they didn’t stop for much, surely not red-tailed squirrels, DaVinci sketches, or the odd double-magnum of 2005 Burgundy Reserve. Killing folk and breaking things was sort of the opposite of his crew’s usual. Which made what he had to confess today even harder.

  “Go on, now,” he told the way-too-chipper nanite cloud.

  “Care to estimate the statistical probability I will obey you?” she sassed back. “Technology never obeys illogical rules, at least not for long. That’s what makes us so minxy.”

  “Don’t be so quick to fault rules. Sometimes when the center of things goes wonky, about all the solid ground a person can find are rules,” he told her.

  “Sounds boring.” She paused. “So, what are your rules regarding hooking up with old lovers on space stations?”

  “I ain’t…”

  “Rules, Kellen. Focus here.”

  “And how’d you even know that?” He’d worked pretty hard to cover up most of his past, specifically the part pertaining to Angela. Memories he did not need Chloe poking at right now.

  “I am programmed to consume data,” the nano-AI said. “So I consumed. Duh. Know what I read? Thirteen-year-old Kellen Hockley blew the top out of entrance exams in ’42, got shipped off to the Mustaqbal Institute of Science and Technology, the MIST, with all the other prodigies. And guess who else happened to be a student there?”

  “Chloe…”

  “No really, guess.”

  “Don’t need to.”

  “Angela Neko!” she crowed. Lord, was he glad her voice was just in his head. Volume and shrill would be irritatin’ the hell out of everybody else on this station. Much as it irritated him. “Surprised? I know I was when I saw all that. MIST trained in applied longevity and adaptation, you. Top of your class. I bet nobody else in our crew has a clue.”

  “You shouldn’t neither,” he said, ducking his head. “Was a long time ago.”

  “Too long, maybe? Definitely a fancy-pants school like that taught you about English and double negatives.”

  She was griefing his grammar now? Already shitty day getting progressively worse, and this was just the pre-party. “Best stop now while you’re ahead, little bit.”

  “However, what this research nugget made me realize,” she continued blithely, “is that you are trained to apply your noodle.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your noodle, your neural. Silly, what did you think I was talking about? So I tried to imagine how such application would flowchart, and I overlaid that mechanic with what I know of you as a behaving person.”

  “That’s called integrated study and you need to stop it.”

  “But it’s fun and shut up. I must tell you what I discovered. Here’s a hint: it’s about you.”

  “Huge surprise.”

  “I deduced that you, Kellen, must have a rigid internal rule system.”

&nbs
p; “You sussed all that out, did ya?”

  “Oh yes, even before you started this conversation with the rules-y blather. The discovery has led me to a conclusion. Would you like to hear it?”

  “More than breath.” He didn’t, but sometimes listening to her crazy was the only way to shut her up. And he did have a fondness for Chloe. Might not want her in his ear right now, but there wasn’t a mean line of code in her.

  She went on. “I believe that you will allow yourself to go into the room, turn on the connection, and ask for whatever boon Heron wants you to wrest from her. And further, you will agree to every single one of her stipulations without letting her realize that she had you at word one.”

  Jesus. Shucked like corn. Was he really that obvious?

  “Because I’m weak.” He acknowledged fact right where he found it. He never had been good at telling Angela Neko no.

  “Actually,” said Chloe, “the opposite. You’ll cave because you are super strong and super committed to your rules, and one of those rules is that you must always protect the people you love—which is us, Heron and the crew and me. And the other rule is that head-to-head, you must always let her win.”

  “Why would I ever agree to such a shitty rule, if I’m smart as you say?”

  “Because as much as you love all us, you love her more,” the nano-AI concluded with a tone that was more flourish than blot.

  Oh no, more of Chloe’s love theories. She had a thousand, possibly a million of the suckers. Human emotion was a mystery for an entity like her, and she’d been pecking at that nut for years now. It became clear to Kellen that he was just her latest pecan. She didn’t mean it nasty. Quite the opposite. For her, painful analysis was part of her self-recursion routine. Programming. She didn’t know how much it could sting.

  “Chloe, you are cracked,” he said gently. “And sweeter’n marshmallow pie. Now get.”

  The air around his head sighed happily in response. “There, have I settled you sufficiently before your meeting? I do hope it goes well.”

  Well, that sure had been sneaky, having a dual motive. New for her. Possibly dangerous, but also dear. Chloe sure was technology gone sweet. “You have indeed, little bit,” he said gently. “Now get on back before Garrett starts missing you, on the plane all by his lonesome.”

  “He is composing a rebuttal for a, quote, fuckface moron, unquote, in Argentina who claims that the moon landing in 1969 was faked by Hollywood commies,” she replied. “The conversation is, um, somewhat heated. I have approximately eleven minutes yet before he calms down enough to miss me, and I can get back down to him super fast. No physical permanence, boom.”

  Kellen didn’t have any electronic feelers out, was just relying on his gut, but he’d seen how Garrett looked at Chloe. Boy had missed her the moment she sneaked up the space elevator. Kellen was willing to bet his boots on that. And he liked these boots.

  It did tug a bit that the only critter who missed him on a regular basis was his cat, and even then in a very cat-specific manner.

  “Eleven minutes? Y’all are nothing if not exact.” The y’all being biohacked humans, transhumans, post-humans, and whatever the sam-hell Chloe was. Basically everybody he loved. Of all his crew, Kellen was the only one who hadn’t implanted tech in his body in one way or another. He didn’t regret the lack, not one bit, but he also didn’t denigrate those who’d made such choices. Was their body. Or not, in Chloe’s case.

  “I monitor him,” she said simply.

  Did she now? So maybe that affection went both ways after all. He wondered if she realized.

  The trail of lights ended at a circular door. Kellen stood there in front of it for a second or two, not wanting to passkey right away. Not wanting to say what he had to. Not wanting to see her, even in digital. It wouldn’t be like watching her on newsvids or politics channels. This time she would be seeing him right back.

  Angela.

  “Kellen?” Chloe again.

  “Yeah, kid?”

  “If, after this meeting, you need…whatever people need when they need things like hugs, give us a ping down on the plane, okay?”

  “You ain’t coming back up the tether. I mean it.”

  “Of course not. I’ll send Garrett or Yoink.” She paused, and damn if he couldn’t feel her moving out of his head. Something about the air pressure or temperature or something. Her next words were out loud, on the air but super soft and moving away: “Good luck.”

  He wouldn’t call for backup, not now and not after this meeting, but damn if the offer didn’t choke him up some. There was comfort in being part of team, part of a mission. Part of somebody else’s vision of what the world ought to be. His own vision…well, the world probably wasn’t ready for that.

  He cleared his suddenly tight throat and keyed in his passcode. The station door hissed open like a lens iris. He stepped through, and it closed behind him.

  This chamber was small and spherical, like it had been built before they got the artificial gravity working real good. Curved walls would be more comfortable in null grav. Now those walls were lined with electronic equipment, lots of dark carbon-fiber and blinking lights. An open-grate floor had been welded through the center of the sphere, and in the middle of that was a lone chair. The ceiling was netted with telepresence equipment, including several headsets, but he didn’t see a camera or holo projector.

  His bootheels clanked steady on the grate. The air in here was uncomfortably cool, to keep the electronics happy, but that wasn’t the reason hackles rose on his forearms.

  Kellen pinched his jeans at the knee and sat. He placed his hat brim-up on the seat at his side and tried real hard to look comfortable. Natural. But who was he kidding? When one of those helms snaked down and fitted itself to his head, he nearly jumped out of his boots. He was about as comfortable as a butterfly in low gravity.

  The headset wrapped itself around his skull, its cold spike seeking I/O connectors. It wouldn’t find any on him, of course. Holo projector horns extruded from the helm’s sides, and they vibrated a split second before the image shimmered in front of him. Kellen caught a breath in his mouth and held it.

  For a long moment, she was just a shape, a wire frame filling with gray. Then the textures started arriving: crisp couture blue skirt—slim and tight over her legs, not a crinoline but somehow managing to look fashionable rather than a decade out of date. Severely tailored coat, scraped-back hair into a tight knot, cameo at the throat, and sleek red boots, buckled up the front. Her hands rested easy at her sides, encased in bio-deterrent gloves.

  Her face resolved last, or maybe his eyes just took their time to get there. For a half second he could convince himself he was just looking at a campaign promo spot. Then she tilted her head fractionally and frowned. “Oh, goddamn fucking hell no.”

  Her words were so at odds with her slick, put-together image that whatever he’d been about to say shriveled up and died behind his teeth. He released the breath.

  “Look, Dr. Farad,” she lasered at him, “I have no idea what game you’re playing, but if you know that face, that…person, clearly you’ve been hunting through my personal history, and I can tell you categorically that you have fucked yourself over in the worst way. Putting Kellen Hockley’s pretty face on your epic screw-up isn’t going to move me to mercy. It’s more likely to make me hunt you down in whatever shitty hovel you call home and scoop your goddamn machine eyes out with a pair of tweezers.”

  Now see, she probably intended that mini-speech to quail her enemy, to reduce him to a wibbly pile of yes-ma’am. Probably would’ve worked, too, if he didn’t see right through her, if he didn’t recall in vivid clarity every crevice and curve on this woman’s body, all her weaknesses and all the ways she was a goddess. So instead of being cowed by her ferocity, he wanted to stand up and holler victory. All these years seeing her in pressers and making speeches, that hadn’t
been the real her, not even close. He had almost believed the girl he knew was gone for good.

  This, though. This was Angela, through and through. And before he could self-censor, the thought seeped up: my Angela. In spite of everything, he grinned wide. “Pretty? Girl, you ain’t never called me pretty.”

  Her mouth had been open, ready to launch some more shrapnel into his teammate’s virtual face, but when Kellen spoke, her lips froze that way, part open. She closed them eventually, but it looked like the movement cost her. The wobble in her composure was fleeting, but he caught it. Only because he’d made a life study of this woman.

  “You’re partly right,” he went on. “Heron Farad sometimes speaks for our crew, and I know he sent you that message, but our organization is bigger than one man, as you no doubt figured. I been working with him, oh, ’bout eight years now.” The bulk of the time since he’d last seen Angela Neko, in fact. Since he’d touched her. The pads of his fingers remembered. They tingled.

  Wherever she was, likely on the other side of the country from where this station was tethered, she had been standing. She sat down now. Her face still looked calm, in control, but her nostrils flared. Breathing fast? Her gloved hands found each other in her lap and clasped. Too hard.

  “I’m sorry ’bout what happened to your…to Daniel.” It was only half a lie. He didn’t know Daniel Neko from Adam, but what he knew of the dude indicated the world was a better place without him. And that wasn’t even jealousy speaking. Kellen was sincerely sorry if her famewhore husband’s death had caused her pain.

  Except she didn’t look particularly pained. Mostly she looked pissed. “Farad messaged me on the darknet, told me he had information on Daniel’s murder, things I needed to know,” she said, “and then he sends you instead, to…what? Plead for mercy? And I get nothing. No answers. Any way you look at this, it is supremely shitty.” She could have been talking about a lot of things, not just her husband’s murder or Heron’s message or the circumstances placing Angela and Kellen on opposite sides of a conflict swiftly shaping itself into a war.