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

by Audrey Faye

  I didn’t want to be heading into this one at all. “I’m supposed to make two adults with functioning hormones fall for each other—how hard can that be?”

  Iggy snorted. “I had a gig like that once.”

  I dug back through my memory banks. “I don’t remember that one.”

  She grinned. “You should. I came back totally juiced up and it took all three of you to drag me away from the spacer bar.”

  That part I remembered. Dancers got things moving, but it was hard from them to stay out of the surging energy of what they unleashed. Tee was used to swimming in the sexual energies, but for Iggy, it had been an eye-opening experience. For me, too—getting her out of that bar had seared some unforgettable images on my eyeballs. Miners aren’t prudes, but we mostly do things in the dark.

  Raven looked at Iggy and grinned. “I think it took you at least a week to stop zinging.”

  She should know—the two of them had been roommates since the beginning, same as Tee and me.

  Iggy just waved a graceful arm in dismissal. “Whatever. Kish, be careful what you sing at your two lovebirds, that’s all I’m saying.”

  There weren’t all that many ways I could get into trouble—Singing just didn’t have the fun side effects of the other Talents. It supposedly made us all spiritual and connected to higher powers, but I tended to leave that kind of woo to the Shamans. I Sing because I have to, because it’s the way I touch the light. And even that much I generally don’t say out loud.

  “So.” Raven had settled back with the bowl of chocolate chilies in her lap. She pitched me one, always willing to share her spicy addiction. “How’d you get the rebel biome to behave itself? Scuttlebutt says you flew back cranky.”

  Scuttlebutt probably used some less polite words than that. “I used the overwhelming beauty of pentatonic fifths to call them forth into cooperation and reasonableness.”

  “Sure you did. And then they all named their firstborn children after you and lived happily ever after.” She grinned. “What really happened?”

  I sighed and downed more of my lime-green swill. “I got pissed off. I tried everything I could think of to get them to even consider the other side’s right to breathe air, and when that didn’t work, I sang a note so bad that they all finally aligned themselves to get me to shut up.”

  Tee slumped over into a pillow, laughing. “You didn’t tell me that part.”

  I hadn’t put it quite that way in my report, either. “It worked.”

  Iggy shook her head and took a tiny bite of a chili. “Rebel.”

  “Am not.” I waved my beaker at her, somewhat precariously. “I got the job done, and I don’t think I broke a single rule doing it.”

  Raven nodded solemnly. “You belong to KarmaCorp, heart and soul.”

  She wasn’t far from wrong. “I should. They made me.”

  “They made all of us,” said Tee quietly. “We all chose this.”

  We had. Belonging to KarmaCorp wasn’t a choice, not if you had Talent. But serving was, and we had all chosen to be active field personnel. Cogs in the great, cranking wheels of KarmaCorp’s mission.

  Iggy aimed a toe poke at my roommate. “What’d you put in the brew? It’s making us way too serious.”

  Tee snorted. “Dancer toe fungus.”

  Raven peered at the bottom of her beaker. “I knew I shouldn’t have drunk it.”

  “What’s wrong with toe fungus?”

  Iggy’s words were beginning to slur a little—or my ears were. I closed my eyes a moment, letting the sounds of their conversation roll over me. A three-part harmony of sorts, a little off key, but deeply familiar. The cacophony of friendship.

  I hummed a quiet, grateful note of my own and lifted my drink.

  Bromelain III would come soon enough. For now, I was right where I wanted to be, toe fungus and all.

  6

  “Your preboarding drink, Singer.”

  A young attendant in blue stood before me, holding out the slimy gray cocktail that was required of every space traveler. It helped our bodies prepare for the kind of trip our genes had never meant for us to take. I took the beaker, wishing it looked half as appetizing as one of Tee’s drinks.

  “It will help with motion sickness and cramping.”

  This attendant was clearly new. “I know that, thank you. I also know it tastes like horse piss.”

  She smiled a little. “I wouldn’t know—I’ve never met a horse.”

  She’d do fine. You had to have a sense of humor to deal with space travelers on a regular basis. We tended to be a cranky lot. “Are we boarding on time?” I didn’t actually know what time that was—with the much quicker-than-usual turnaround between assignments, I’d barely managed to find some clean skinsuits and replenish my stash of reading materials.

  “I believe so.” The attendant smiled and took my empty glass. “If you need anything else before you board, just let me or one of my associates know.”

  If there was more than one of her in the vicinity, this was one of the better flight companies.

  I took a look outside the viewing port at the cubecraft waiting for us, spied the maple leaf on the side, and relaxed. Budgets must be looking good if I was getting to fly with the Canucks. The Canadians were expensive, but they knew how to transport a body in reasonable comfort.

  My stomach rumbled in gratitude. The low-budget cubes could be gut-wrenching, to put it mildly.

  I found a spot on the wall and set my travel bag down to wait. Many of my fellow travelers did the same. A few paced, and some newbies near the boarding gate were doing the prescribed pre-flight exercises. I relaxed a notch further. No one too heavily inebriated, and no one traveling with toddlers. A group of tanned, muscled guys over in the corner were making too much noise, but hopefully they’d be at the far end of the tin can. If I could manage to get myself seated next to a couple of the businessmen glued to their tablets, so much the better.

  A chirpy voice started announcing levels for boarding, and I reached down for my travel bag. Reading materials and chocolate-covered cranberries, check. One ear half tuned to the instructions, I made my way into the sea of humanity that was organizing itself into the three-line formation most efficient for cube boarding. We passed through ID and ticket checks, and then the lines split again, feeding us into nine tubes that led to various entry doors.

  I tried not to think about the shapes and lines too hard—they made my brain dizzy.

  A small boy a few meters up my line danced in place, fractious energy bouncing off the clear walls of the loading tube. His mother already looked harried.

  I gritted my teeth. I knew enough of Tee’s small relatives to know that the next four days weren’t likely to improve his mood any. I also knew how little it would take to calm him—and how totally against the nit-picky KarmaCorp rule book it was to do so. Little actions could have big effects.

  The boy let out a shrill and rising scream that beat a Med-pod siren for intensity, hands down.

  I sighed and sang a harmonic under my breath. If word got back to Yesenia’s office, I’d be scrubbing compost tubes for the next rotation, but it wasn’t her eardrums on the line.

  The boy quieted, taking his mother’s hand.

  Several people near me let out sighs of relief. I let go of the harmonic and resumed my slow shuffle forward.

  A head bent over my shoulder, and a melodious voice pitched words meant for me alone. “Thank you, Singer—that was well done.”

  I looked up at the man in surprise. My harmonic shouldn’t have been audible.

  He smiled. “I have grandsons, and I know a bit about calming them down.” He held out a hand. “I’m Ralph Emerson—lovely to be traveling with you.”

  Ah. There were at least three Emersons working this quadrant for KarmaCorp. I took his hand and shook. “I’d say the same, but after four days on board, I probably won’t like you any better than anyone else.”

  His laugh had the same melodious undertones as his voice. N
o wonder his family produced Singers. “I appreciate your… initiative.” His eyes said what his words couldn’t—if this got back to headquarters, it wouldn’t have come from him.

  I’d probably survive if it did. Technically, I was on assignment already, and arriving with my eardrums intact seemed like it should qualify as reasonable use of Talent.

  I didn’t want to have to argue that in Yesenia’s office, however.

  Whatever further conversation I might have had with Ralph was interrupted by our arrival at the boarding door. I sighed as he was directed left and I was sent right. Too bad—he’d have made a stellar travel companion. I made my way to my seat and grimaced inwardly as I finally caught sight of it. I’d been dumped in with the loud guys with muscles. No good deeds go unpunished.

  I squeezed past two of them and plunked down in the tiny space of real estate that had been designated as mine for the duration of our flight. The guys shuffled around and tried to get their shoulders out of my way, with limited results. Even the Canadians designed their cubecraft seats for underweight eight-year-olds.

  I saw the guy beside me taking in the logo on my skinsuit that identified me as a KarmaCorp Singer, and let him look. Fixers generally went incognito for most of their time on-planet, especially the data-gathering stages, but I pulled out the uniform for travel—it tended to encourage people to leave me alone. I’d change at Corinthian Station before I boarded my final hop to Bromelain III.

  I caught a flash of a tattoo sticking out from under his skinsuit and raised an eyebrow, mildly curious in return. Space travel is this weird mix of intimacy and avoidance with people you’ll never see again.

  He held out his arm so I could see the stylized tat with the curvy, undulating diamond.

  That was answer enough. He was a Sun Dancer, one of the crazy breed that strapped solar sails to the arms of their astrosuits and went flying with the stars. No tethers, no spotting crew, no back-up propellant tanks to get back home if their fragile sail took a hit from some space debris.

  They were entirely crazy, but I’d flown a couple of dances in virtual, and it was a pretty mindblowing experience. Kind of like being one of those seeds Tee croons to, with the hairy little plumes sticking out of their heads. Flotsam in a vast universe that doesn’t give a damn if you live or die, but enchants you with its beauty all the same.

  I wasn’t that kind of flotsam. I didn’t have the freedom to throw my life away on a solar flare gone amok.

  Sexy guy raised an eyebrow. “Ever met a Sun Dancer before?”

  “Yeah.” I pulled my brain back out of the ether. He probably assumed my glazed eyes were fantasizing about his naked chest, which, judging from what I could see through his skinsuit, wasn’t an entirely unreasonable assumption.

  He offered up a grin that was less arrogant than most of his kind. “You ever flown?”

  He wasn’t talking about a cubesat ride. “No.” I made to pull the privacy bubble around my head and then reconsidered. It was a pretty long flight, and he didn’t smell like totally bad company. “I’ve heard it’s pretty addictive, though.”

  “Better than sex.” He laughed, as much at himself as anyone else. “Most times, anyhow.”

  I raised an eyebrow, amused despite myself. “That’s not a great advertisement for your skills.”

  The guy strapped in behind us reached around and boffed my seatmate’s head. “Jay, you’re such a dingbat.” He made overt googly eyes at me. “Come sit back here—we know how to romance a woman properly.”

  Their odds on romancing a Singer were approximately nil, and I figured they knew that. My seatmate, now named but not at all chastened, pushed a button to call over the serverbot. “Want anything to eat?”

  Generally, I avoided making my stomach do any work in spaceflight, but the Canucks usually managed gentle landings, and my appetite was still ramped up from the heavy-grav world of my last assignment. “Sure, so long as they have something that isn’t soy.”

  The guy behind us hooted again. “Look out, Jay—this one’s high maintenance.”

  Somehow their juvenile antics continued to find my funny bone. I might as well enjoy them for what they were—a four-day distraction I’d never see again. “It’s worse than you think, hot stuff. I don’t do synth-caf, either.” The fake caffeine screwed with my vocal chords, but he didn’t need to know that. “I like my food real.” At least, I did when I could afford it, and these days, Journeywoman wages were almost up to the task of keeping my belly happy with stuff that had swum or mooed or clucked once upon a time. Tee and her family kept us well supplied with things that had grown in actual dirt.

  The mining brat had gotten totally spoiled.

  Jay pulled out my arm tray and set down a plasticup. “Not soy. Not real, either—sorry, the menu doesn’t run to the good stuff.”

  Neither should the budget of a stranger. “That wasn’t an actual hint.”

  “I know.” His smile reminded me of an overgrown teddy bear. “But it would have been fun to see your reaction.”

  I studied him a little more carefully. Some people slot into a round hole or a square box and you don’t have to think much to figure them out. This guy was a bit of a surprise, which was a characteristic I enjoyed in people I had to sit beside for days. I picked up the cup and settled deeper into my seat. Maybe it wouldn’t be an entirely horrible flight.

  He glanced my direction again, eyes pulled to the logo on my skinsuit. “Is it hard?”

  That was a long conversation I didn’t generally have with strangers. “Is what hard?”

  He thought for a minute, clearly reformulating his question. “Walking around the galaxy with so much power to change things.”

  That was a more nuanced question than most people asked. I gave him points for having a brain and using it, and contemplated how to answer. When I wore KarmaCorp’s logo on my chest, every word I said represented the company. And people, even thoughtful ones, often carried plenty of distrust for the entity I worked for.

  Three hundred years ago, a small group known as the Warriors of Karma had stopped an intergalactic war in its tracks—and held peace ransom for enough assets to keep the entity they formed independent and non-aligned ever since. People still didn’t know what to make of a company born from a group of peace terrorists. We were a force to be reckoned with, and in most places, a very respected one. But that didn’t always mean people liked us very much. “We have less power than most people imagine.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound like the official company line.”

  It wasn’t. Often, half our work got done simply because of the KarmaCorp mystique. But I was a Fixer with an annoying tendency to tell the truth. I looked at sexy guy’s tat again. Maybe he’d understand better than most. “It’s like your swish suit and jet packs and all that. Fancy toys, but when you’re facing down bumpy solar winds, I bet you don’t feel very powerful.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “There’s a difference between power and control.”

  “Not for a Fixer.” Control was at the heart of everything we did.

  He considered that for a long moment. “That sounds sad.”

  It might to a guy who strapped a jet pack on his back and danced with death for entertainment. “It’s better than the alternatives.” Before the Warriors of Karma, most people with Talent had lived short lives full of misery and destruction.

  He nodded slowly. “It must take a strong person to live with all that.”

  No. Just one who had finally learned to find her purpose in the inevitable. “I just do my job.” And somewhere along the way, I’d learned to like it pretty well. I looked over at Jay, suddenly curious again. “What do you do when you’re not trying to turn yourself into space dust?”

  His grin really was appealing. “I’m an accountant.”

  I leaned back, amused, and shook my head. “And you think my life has issues?”

  His laugh nearly made my seat rumble.

  7

  There’
s just no way to travel for days on end in a tin can, even a fairly comfortable tin can, without hating the universe when you crawl out. And the final insult of thirty-six hours in the transpo ferry from Corinthian Station to the landing terminal on Bromelain III had killed any remnants of goodwill I had left. We’d stopped at seven planets en route to this one, and I’d given up trying to keep track of the flow of grumpy humanity around me.

  I stepped out of the disembarking tube into the small, obnoxiously bright waiting area that served as the planet’s headquarters for space travel. My legs felt like they’d picked a fight with a concrete mixer, and I let the surprisingly large number of people milling around push me toward the outer walls. Walls usually had doors somewhere, and I needed a good stretch, something heavily alcoholic, and three days of uninterrupted sleep, preferably in that order.

  “Singer.” The woman who’d suddenly appeared at my side barely came up to my shoulder. “If you’d come with me, I can make you a lot more comfortable in a jiffy.”

  Apparently, I didn’t need to find my local contact—she’d found me. The woman who had magically appeared at my side was tiny, ancient, and spoke with a voice like a cannon. She was also a KarmaCorp legend. “You must be Tameka Boon.” I studied her hands, encrusted with dirt, and her merry laughing eyes. “You’re not what I expected.”

  Her lips twitched with amusement. “Good. I’d hate to be getting predictable in my old age.”

  My eyes were drawn back to her dirt-stained fingers—I’d seen those on Tee far too often to mistake them for anything else. “I didn’t know you were a Grower too.” It was highly unusual for Fixers to have more than one Talent.

  Her laugh was as loud as the rest of her. “Not even kind of, child. I was a damn fine Dancer once, and occasionally my creaky hips still demand a twirl or two. But here on BroThree, you either grow your own food or you eat soy by the bucketful.”

  I scowled. “Soy screws with my vocal chords.”

  “I wasn’t born yesterday.” Tameka was quick-marching me down the oversized walkways that funneled space traffic through climate-controlled tubes out into the ecoverse of Bromelain III. “I’ve got you a full supply of Singer-approved meal packs, and your roommate was kind enough to provide me a list of some of your favorite recipes in case you’d rather eat the real thing.”