Overload Flux

by Carol Van Natta

  She nodded. He knew she didn’t see what the flurry was about. Her equanimity was one of her many charms.

  “Should I tell him ‘yes’?” he pressed.

  She gave him a puzzled look. “It’s your kitchen.”

  He put his hands on her shoulders and met her gaze. “I’d like you to think of it as yours, too.”

  He watched her as she thought about what he’d said.

  “Are you asking me to move in with you?” Her voice was soft.

  “Yes, ljósið mitt, I am.” He'd called her his light, because she was. He gave her a warm smile and tried not to wear his heart on his sleeve. It had to be her choice.

  They were interrupted by the distinctive ping tone that meant a live call from Zheer.

  Djöfull, thought Luka darkly, as he walked to the desk to answer. Did that woman live at the office?

  He activated the comp, and the holo of Zheer, seated, sprang to life. It was the middle of the night, and yet she was impeccably dressed. Maybe she really did live at the office. Or maybe she considered corporate suits as casual clothes, and she wore ballgowns the rest of the time. He mentally shook his head. Lack of sleep was making him whimsical.

  “Excellent report, as usual,” she said. She wouldn’t have had time to do more than skim the conclusions section. Not that she’d ever read the whole thing. Only Mairwen did that.

  “The client’s parents will be pleased that they were right in pressuring the police to remove Detective Harless from the case.”

  “I wondered,” said Luka. “The new primary, Hsu Wei, will likely do a better job, from what I saw.”

  He’d been distracted by testing his control over his still dangerous reconstruction talent, or he’d have used his other talent to confirm his opinion. He’d gotten over his reluctance to pry. He never wanted to be surprised by another Haberville again.

  “Luka,” Zheer began, then hesitated. “I’ve been refusing cases like this one for you. Has that changed?”

  “Let me get back to you on that,” Luka hedged. He wanted to select his own cases and set some boundaries, and needed time to get them straight in his own mind.

  “Fair enough. Is Morganthur still there?”

  Luka looked at Mairwen as she stepped into camera view.

  “Good,” said Zheer. “You have a new industrial security assessment case. It’s down in Boetîa déʂ Luan, and it’s a rush job, as usual. It’s a large complex, so you’ll need help. Take Luka.”

  “Should we plan on using charter, commercial, or suborbital?” asked Mairwen. A valid question, since the site was in Grand Sur, the continent south and east of Norutara, where Etonver was.

  “Suborbital. They’re in a hurry. I sent the details to your percomps. I’m told we had two more assessment inquiries today. At this rate, La Plata is going to need to hire an assistant for you.” She gave them an enigmatic smile. “Oh, and since I have you both, I thought you might be interested to know that Juno Vizla Casualty is offering La Plata a special bonus for the successful completion of the pharma theft case. In exchange, they want us to not sue them over the fact that they knew about the high number of ‘accidents’ befalling ships that left Horvax Station, a fact they neglected to tell us when they saw and approved your itinerary. With the poisoning of Insche 255C scheduled for galactic-wide broadcast in three weeks, they’d like to keep their name out of the coverage.”

  Luka raised an eyebrow. “Will we sue?”

  “If we must. I prefer to win the war instead.” With that cryptic statement, she wished them a pleasant night and signed off.

  He closed down the comp and looked at Mairwen. “That was interesting.”

  “Why?”

  “Forecasters like Seshulla Zheer don’t chat. They play n-dimensional chess.” He planned to contemplate what she’d said in the morning, after a full night’s sleep.

  Mairwen gave him a small smile. “I don’t chat, either.”

  He reached for her hand and pulled her into an embrace. She felt perfect in his arms. “You do so, ástin mín. You’re just picky who you do it with.”

  He leaned his head against hers, thinking it was probably too late to pick up their interrupted conversation. He schooled himself to have patience. He’d rather win a whole life with Mairwen, not just a part of it now. He sighed.

  “Ég munu flytja inn með þér,” she said.

  Delight bloomed in him. “You will? I’ll call the movers tomorrow. Later today. Whatever.” He tightened his arms around her. Then it hit him. “Wait… that was Icelandic.” He pulled back to look at her face. “You said you’d move in with me in Icelandic.”

  She nodded and smiled.

  “Þakka þér, engillinn minn.” He kissed her soundly. “It’s the most thoughtful gift I’ve ever received.”

  “You’re welcome, but I’m not an angel.” She cupped the side of his face with her hand and stroked with her thumb. “There is strategic value in us both knowing a language only spoken on one underpopulated planet.”

  He smiled and kissed her again, then let her go, but kept her hand to lead her toward the bedroom. “I would expect no less from a woman who wears five knives.” He waved the lights off as they left the living area. “That was how I knew you were something special, that first night in the warehouse.”

  She usually demurred when he told her things like that, but instead, she looked unexpectedly thoughtful.

  “Yes?” he prompted.

  “The dead man tonight.”

  Not the direction of thought he was hoping for.

  She stopped walking. “He was in the warehouse. His scent was all over the forceblade that killed Balkovsky. I didn’t connect it until you reminded me.”

  “How sure are you? Enough for me to make an unofficial suggestion to Hsu Wei that she look at him for Leo and Adina?”

  “That, maybe, but nothing more. I didn’t imprint the scent, I just remember it.”

  She took off her top and leggings and put them on the chair, then put her percomp in the drawer he’d cleared for her. It was still mostly empty, despite the fact that most of her things had migrated slowly into his townhouse. She had the least amount of possessions of anyone he’d ever met, male or female. The movers would have an easy job, except for her small but heavy force exerciser.

  He used the fresher, then pulled his sweater off over his head and removed his pants quickly. “If he killed Leo, it’s a fair guess that he killed Amhur, too. It was the same theft crew.” He got into the heated bed where it was warm. “If it’s the same man, the mode of his death tonight was deserved.” He raised his voice a little so it carried to her in the fresher, even though he knew she could hear him even if he whispered.

  She returned and gave him a sardonic smile as she released the knives and sheaths from her legs, arms, and back. “That’s very frontier justice of you. I’m a bad influence.” Naked, she was still lethally beautiful, not to mention blue-star hot.

  “Not at all. I’m just more pragmatic these days.” Having survived a stabbing, being kidnapped, a combat firefight, and a space battle, he’d gained some perspective. He’d been afraid of losing his compassion, but Mairwen, with a far more horrific past and a likely body count of untold numbers, was still very much human.

  She slid under the covers and along his side. She rested her head on his shoulder, and her legs twined with his. He loved the smell of her, the glide of her skin on his. She’d get up before he did, as always, but he was glad she liked sharing the bed with him for a while. He couldn’t help but use a thread of his talent when she was near because he loved the feel of her essence in his mind.

  He reached up and waved the lights to almost nothing.

  Despite being tired, he was still keyed up from the evening. He’d proved he could control his talent, and he’d achieved the first step in his grand plan for building a life with the woman he was deeply and desperately in love with. Who was moving in with him.

  “You once said you’d tell me about Mairwen Morganthur
...”

  He focused carefully on her breathing and the feel of her body. He didn’t want to bring up bad memories for her, but he had to know if he needed to worry about who the real Mairwen Morganthur had been. She passed civilian background checks with flying colors, but someone might look more thoroughly someday.

  Her hand flattened on his chest. “It’s not pretty.”

  He knew she was worried about how it would affect him, especially after the evening’s experience. “I figured, ljósið mitt. I’ll be all right.” He tightened his arm around her waist with gentle, reassuring pressure.

  She took a deep breath. “Most tracker targets are political or covert, but sometimes they’re criminal. Two years after I... graduated, I was sent to a frontier planet to take down slave traders. When I found the camp in the middle of a monsoon jungle, the slaves had revolted and the traders had killed most of them. I followed my orders and killed the slavers and guards, then against orders, I looked for surviving slaves. I found four: a woman, about my age, and three children. The woman had protected the children, but at the cost of her own life. She was mortally wounded, and I could do nothing except stay with her while she died. I promised to get the children to safety.”

  He felt her shake her head, perhaps at some memory that made her regretful. He stroked her back slowly.

  “The woman was an orphan, the last of her maternal and paternal lines, from a failed colony on a different frontier planet.”

  “Waimaakole,” he said. The planet she’d said she was from.

  “Yes. The foster house illegally sold her as an indenturee to care for the slaver’s younger ‘merchandise.’ She was unafraid to die if the children were safe. I was... sad she wouldn’t be missed or remembered.”

  His intuition twitched. “So you took her name, in her honor, when you got out.”

  He was continually amazed that the CPS imagined they had obliterated the humanity from Mairwen. Her feelings ran deep and strong, no matter how well she controlled the surface.

  “Honor, yes, but expedience, too. All trackers dream of freedom. It’s the only thing we ever agreed on when we weren’t trying to kill one another.”

  “Kill? Why?”

  “The CPS makes sure there are no tracker alliances. We’re hard enough to control as individuals. There were rumors of a rebellion early in the program, long before my time. It took platoons of Jumpers and telekinetic minders to crush it.”

  He smiled in the dark. “Considering your extraordinary skills, I’m not surprised.” He caressed her shoulder with his free hand. “So there was a woman your age, now dead, with an off-the-net past.”

  She nodded. “I was already planning to escape. Since my own identity was irretrievably lost, I knew I’d need a new one. Hers was ideal. When I took biometric samples of the slavers as proof of death, I took her samples, too, and hid them. I used them to build a life for her. I taught myself some Welsh, the language of her mother, plus computer twists, under the guise of improving my tracker skills. Each time I was on a mission and unobserved, I hunted for the few real records of her and altered or destroyed them. I kept her alive in new records and created accounts to funnel any untraceable funds I could find. She moved often. She was on Rekoria when I ‘died’ on my last mission. She moved to Etonver and accepted a night-shift guard job at La Plata.”

  “How did you handle the biometrics? Your former employer must have virtual tripwires throughout the galaxy just waiting for a stray biometric from the ‘lost’ to show up somewhere.”

  “Blackmarket chimera implant to match the samples I’d saved.”

  He tightened his arms around her as he realized the implications. Without a healer or the ability to use pain medications, she’d have been very sick and in excruciating pain for weeks, maybe months, and very vulnerable. The CPS had already meddled with her DNA, and the implant could easily have killed her.

  It was such an unlikely convergence of chance that had brought them together that first night in the spaceport warehouse. He shivered in spite of himself. No wonder people were tempted to believe in fate or destiny.

  “I am,” he said, tilting his head down to kiss her, “a very lucky man.”

  “We’re both lucky. Who else would teach me how to be human?”

  He took several long, deliberate breaths and stroked her skin slowly, letting the simple actions and her warmth help clear his mind of the sadness and anger he felt for the too-young woman who’d had to steal another’s identity because the CPS had obliterated hers. And had treated her and her fellow trackers worse than slaves, making them disbelieve their own humanity. The ironically named Citizen Protection Service had gotten away with far too much for far too long.

  “Your former employer deserves to be taken down, piece by nasty little piece,” he said, with more vehemence than he’d intended.

  “Yes,” she agreed, “but not by us.” He heard determination in her tone, and worry.

  She must think he wanted to single-handedly take on the whole government covert ops organization. He didn’t. He wanted to enjoy a long life with his socially artless, impossibly skilled woman. Putting her in the CPS’s sights would cut that decidedly short.

  He laughed. “No, my heart, the men you follow are brilliant, not insane.”

  She laughed and touched his face with gentle fingers. “There’s only you.” Her voice was soft and warm. “Ég elska þig.”

  “I love you, too, more than I can say.” He found her mouth for a long, sense-drenching kiss.

  “Like I said, I’m a very lucky man.”

  EPILOGUE

  * Planet: Rekoria * GDAT 3238.001*

  Seshulla Zheer smoothed the front of her gold gossamer caftan, enjoying the color and the freedom from the restricting suits she usually lived in. The view from her fifth-floor executive office overlooked a park that had floating fairy lights all night long. The early summer weather made Etonver more bearable than usual.

  From an ornate and velvet-lined box, she gently removed the hand-blown bottle of two-hundred-year-old, flamed, five-barrel cognac, then put it carefully on the serving cart.

  It was the first day of the Galactic Standard new year, but still a few minutes before midnight on Rekoria. It was a minor event, hardly celebrated at all compared to the local summer solstice, which was still a couple of weeks away. Still, it meant something to her. She’d been born on a galactic new year, far longer ago than she’d ever admit.

  As her guests seated themselves at her worktable, she served them the beverages she’d arranged with them each in mind. For Jerzi Adams, in casual clothes that showed off his muscular physique, a perfectly chilled dark lager from Rekoria’s best brewery, served in a stein decorated with ancient rifles. For Luka Foxe, stylish in a grey silk shirt and black vest, white champagne in an antique ice flute, the closest she could come to acknowledging his maternal Icelandic heritage. She knew he didn’t care for hard alcohol. For Beva Rienville, comfortable in a brightly floral sundress, a classic black Nero d’Avola in a handmade Bordeaux stem, because she knew Beva’s tastes. And for Mairwen Morganthur, in non-descript dark red knit, with long sleeves as always to hide the plethora of knives she was never without, an artistically minimalist glass of iced herbal Schisandra tea steeped slowly in triple-filtered water.

  Lastly, she poured herself another snifter of outrageously rare cognac, then sat in the only empty chair at her worktable. She knew they were genteelly shocked at her casual appearance, and the fact that she was undeniably tipsy.

  She smiled at them all. “I know the rumor is I don’t sleep. I actually do, but not for long.” She centered her snifter on the coaster protecting the worktable’s hand-polished finish. “You all know I was a forecaster for the CPS, and Beva knows I retired on disability. The ‘enhancement’ drug they used on me gave me permanent hypnolepsy.”

  She’d been lucky. Most of the others in the secret “study group” who’d received the same experimental version of the drug had died within a year. She ran a fing
er along the rim of her snifter.

  “I can take a regimen of daily drugs and be normal, or I can be an effective forecaster, but not both. Since I choose the latter, I have to sleep in two-hour intervals, day and night.”

  It wasn’t news to Beva, but it was to the others. Jerzi looked surprised, and Luka looked intrigued. Morganthur looked… quiet. It was what made people underestimate her at first, the way Seshulla had.

  She knew she should gently lead them up to the reason she’d called such an inconveniently late meeting, but she was suddenly chafing at the rituals of politeness.

  “I know you all have secrets and may know some of them about each other. Now you know one of mine.” She took a deep breath. “Here’s another. There’s an upheaval coming, and it’ll affect the whole Concordance. Not tomorrow, or even next year, but in six years or eight years at the outside.”

  To their credit, none of them gave even a hint that they suspected she might be chemmed on hallucinogens in addition to being drunk.

  “Have you ever heard of Ayorinn’s Legacy?”

  Luka, Beva, and Adams shook their heads. Morganthur gave no indication, which Seshulla took to mean she probably had, but not in a context she was willing to admit. Seshulla would bet her best handwoven spidersilk carpet that not even Beva, with her galaxy-class interrogation talent, could get anything out of Morganthur she wasn’t willing to give.

  “Once upon a time…” she stopped and smiled playfully. “That’s how all the best stories start.”

  Beva smiled with good humor. Seshulla allowed herself one sip from her snifter. It was exquisitely breathtaking.

  “Maybe twenty-five years ago, there was a legendary, and possibly mythical, forecaster named Ayorinn. The best there’s ever been. You must understand that good forecasters do more than predict the future, they can influence it. Ayorinn spent ten years developing a forecast, because he wanted to move the entire galaxy. He knew certain government organizations would do everything they could to suppress it, so he hid it in a series of coded poetic quatrains on timed release. The goal of his forecast was freedom for… people with secrets.”