Star Stories - Beginnings (The Fixers of KarmaCorp Book 3)

by Faye, Audrey

  Star Stories

  Beginnings

  Audrey Faye

  Contents

  Introduction

  Find the Four

  An Assistant As Ordered

  A Tale of Two Ships

  Summoned

  Tadpole School

  A Child Is Born

  Thank You

  Introduction

  This is a volume of short stories, companion tales that fit in The Fixers of KarmaCorp series. hey started off as add-ons, but Raven now insists that they are part of the required reading. You’ll need them to fully enjoy her book.

  These stories are meant to fill in some of the small, interesting nooks and crannies in a world that has many of them. I hope they will add to the richness of the longer stories I tell, and provide you small delights as you read a snippet of history from a character you already love, or tease you to go read their longer story.

  Audrey

  Find the Four

  This was a foolish waste of time.

  Yesenia Mayes stepped into the loud, brisk, and vividly colorful market of Tezuli Spaceport and cursed the gut instinct that had dragged her a week out of her way and lightyears from common sense. Fixers didn’t respond to whispers in the wind, and the anonymous comm message she’d received that had bounced through three quadrants before it landed on her tablet didn’t even qualify as a whisper.

  Even so, the content had chilled her soul.

  She looked around, eyes and ears taking in her surroundings even if her mind was inexcusably wandering. It was midday in the spaceport’s diurnal cycle, and the populace clustered around stalls and blanket displays doing brisk business suggested that the market was both busy and safe. Elders and children roamed freely, and the friendly greetings between customers and vendors indicated both familiarity and respect.

  Not the kind of place that needed a Fixer, at least on the surface. And certainly not a place that sent messages to KarmaCorp’s newly minted Director for the quadrant.

  Yesenia shifted slightly as a small boy ran her direction, hotly pursued by three of his friends. The steaming bun in his hands suggested the reason for the chase. She gave the boy in the lead a sharp look as he ducked by her, and then relaxed. His cheeks were far too chubby to belong to a child who truly needed food.

  On her home world, such a pursuit would have been in deadly earnest—and the child carrying such treasure far more skilled at hiding their bounty.

  KarmaCorp’s reach was vast, and the Federated Commonwealth of Planets had no tolerance for starving children, but neither of those meant it didn’t happen. She knew that far better than most. There were always underbellies, corners of the universe good at making themselves hard to find. Enclaves of the lawless or the desperate.

  “Mi’dama, might I help you?”

  Yesenia looked down in surprise. The shopkeeper who had been brave enough to accost her came barely to her shoulder, and his wizened face showed no signs of fear.

  She blinked—perhaps he was blind. No one looked at her without fear, not these days. She was Traveler Yesenia Mayes, KarmaCorp’s most legendary Fixer, or at least its most terrifying one—and these days, a standard fixture on galactic vid screens. And for those who didn’t recognize her on sight, the lethal look in her eyes was generally enough. “I’m not buying.”

  The man’s face carved into a well-lined grin as he met her gaze with a direct one of his own. “I can see that well enough.”

  Not blind, then. She took a closer look—anonymous message senders might come in any sort of guise. Her Talent didn’t pick up anything different than what her eyes had already seen. An old man, serenely confident in who he was and extending a simple offer of help.

  Not something Yesenia Mayes was used to taking. “I had some time to kill between my shuttles. Someone mentioned that the market was a good place to spend a few hours.”

  The man who had apparently designated himself her companion chuckled. “It is that, indeed. I’m Tamsin. Perhaps you might do an old man the pleasure of letting him introduce you to the jewel of Tezuli Spaceport.”

  The market looked like a jewel—a boisterous and flamboyant one. Yesenia considered, and then gave him a sharp nod. A good Fixer knew the value of local contacts, and the message she had received had been long on fear-mongering and short on useful details. Perhaps an old man with wise eyes could be helpful in that regard.

  Or perhaps he’d been sent. She wasn’t a big believer in coincidence. Paranoia had served her very well over the years.

  “Are you at all hungry, mi’dama?” Tamsin had somehow managed to herd her into a stroll down one of the larger aisles—without laying a hand on her person.

  Judging from the level of casual physical contact around her, that wasn’t a cultural norm. She filed that data away, not yet drawing conclusions. “I could perhaps eat a small snack.” She had a terrible weakness for market food—the legacy of a child who had once thought it the pinnacle of achievement to have enough coin in her pocket to buy some.

  She had never stolen, not even in the worst of hunger.

  What she had done instead might have been worse.

  “This way.” Tamsin smiled and laid his hand on the head of a small child who waved up at him. “There are some fine food vendors just up ahead. Sweet treats and savory ones.”

  She chose savory, always. She could smell their teasing scents now, the tempting richness and dripping fats and mingling spices. Her taste buds gurgled out saliva in response. Yesenia kept her somewhat amused thoughts to herself. She would eat only if she determined it safe, and the hungry child inside her would just have to live with that choice.

  A preteen girl stepped into their path, arms full of bright woven scarves. “Would your lady like a shawl, Tamsin?” She smiled up at Yesenia. “They’re a wonder for keeping the chill of a shuttle off your shoulders.”

  Apparently nobody here knew enough to read a lack of welcome in a visitor’s eyes. “I’m not buying, thank you.”

  The girl winked at Tamsin, not at all discouraged. “If she changes her mind, you know where to find me.”

  He smiled fondly and laid a hand on her cheek. “Indeed I do, m’alanna. Tell your sister the weaver that I’ll be desiring a new rug before winter—these old bones need to be kept warm.”

  “I’m almost ready to make a rug on my own. Perhaps one day I’ll do fine enough work to grace your tent.”

  Yesenia felt her eyebrows winging up in surprise. “You live in tents?” That was highly unusual for a space station, and this one was far enough from the nearest planets that she’d assumed the market vendors would largely be residents of the spaceport.

  The girl’s laughter tinkled brightly over the general hubbub. “Only in our dreams, mi’dama. But we’ve kept the words of our ancestors alive to remind us who we are.” She bowed and backed away, managing to navigate the crowd as if she had a set of eyes in the back of her head. “Good day to you both. Enjoy the market.”

  “She’ll be off to help her mother,” said Tamsin quietly. “She’s a hard worker, that one, and very committed to her family.”

  Yesenia heard more in his voice, and the Song underneath it, than he was saying. “Is that why you’ll buy her first rug when she makes it?”

  He laughed. “Is such a thought so obvious on my face?”

  Not on his face, no, but her Talent had never needed such obvious clues. Yesenia took another look around, with a Fixer’s eye to the culture of the market. The color had more meaning now, as did the sketches a talented young artist was rendering at the side of the aisle.

  Tamsin stayed at her
shoulder as she stepped in for a closer look. He smiled as the artist paused in her sketching long enough to give them both a welcoming smile. “Melessa draws pictures of the gypsies of Earth, who we count as our cultural ancestors.”

  Yesenia looked more closely at the drawings. Vivid portraits, full of movement and life and even music, if such a thing could be put on a page. The girl used some kind of colored sticks and what looked like handmade paper. Her drawings were quick, rustic, and beautiful. “You’re Wanderers, then.” She’d met a few groups of the traveling people in the past, but never a stationary settlement.

  “Of a sort.” Tamsin nodded in approval as the artist picked out a red drawing stick. “We’ve decided that we can remain in one spot and let the world travel past us.”

  A spaceport was a pretty good place to watch the flow of humanity. And it meant she was a fool if she assumed they didn’t know who and what she was. Wanderers didn’t miss much. Smarter to assume that they knew and for some reason, didn’t care—or at least weren’t showing it. She looked at the man who had attached himself to her and made an educated guess. “Do you have any children here who might have some interest in coming to work for KarmaCorp?”

  It was a reach, but not a long one. The Wanderers had more than their share of what they called gifts. Not precisely the same as Talents, but not entirely different, either—and it was a rare cohort of Fixers who didn’t have one or two Wanderers in the mix.

  Tamsin dipped his chin, acknowledging the shift in the conversation.

  Yesenia noted that he didn’t look at all surprised, and neither did Melessa. They knew who she was—and in all likelihood, knew why she was here. Frustration flared at the slow, winding game, but she didn’t let a whiff of that show on her face. There would be a time when she would step in and demand that this dance move to her beat, but for now, she could let them set the pace.

  She let her eyes travel back to the art in progress. The addition of the red, slashed through the skirt of the dancing gypsy, was making the entire drawing come alive under Melessa’s flying hands.

  Yesenia let her heart yearn for just a moment.

  Melessa met her gaze, eyes twinkling. “It’s the fourth of a series. If you come back in an hour, I can have them all tubed up for you for transport.”

  She wasn’t here to buy art. “I didn’t come to shop.”

  Tamsin chuckled beside her. “I’d be a very rich man if I had a tenth-credit for every visitor to the market who says that.”

  Yesenia’s agile mind was already offering up justification. Spending a few credits to maintain good relations with the locals was merely smart protocol. The head of the Anthro team would enjoy the sketches, and the opportunity to study their materials and design.

  She snorted, amused at herself for the second time in a quarter hour. Kechan would be on the first shuttle once she told him of the tribe of stationary Wanderers. She didn’t need him as an excuse for a grown woman to buy something frivolous.

  Melessa tipped her head down, not quite hiding her knowing smile.

  Yesenia turned away, not saying anything. She was quite sure the drawings would be ready to go when she returned. She waited until they were a few steps away from the artist’s blanket and then looked over at the man guiding her.

  He dipped his chin again, wisely not commenting on her choice, and smoothly picking up the thread of their previous conversation instead. “No children with Talent, Traveler. Not at this time.”

  She let the sharp edge of frustration flare where he could see it this time. “I assume you have a very good reason for all the smoke and mirrors.”

  He smiled at a rotund shopkeeper and her stall of baked goods. “We are aware that we asked KarmaCorp’s newest Director to voyage well out of her way based on very little information. We believe our reasons are good.”

  The smell of the food was getting to her. “Would you care to share that reason, or must I purchase goods from half the market as my price for the information?”

  His laugh came all the way up from his belly. “We’ve never needed such enticements, mi’dama, and we won’t be starting now.” He looped a companionable hand through her elbow. “Come. I’ll buy you a savory pastry and a mug of good, sweet cider, and once you’ve had your fill I’ll take you to see Alara.”

  Yesenia considered planting her feet and refusing to be herded, but decided it would only make her look and feel like a recalcitrant child. “And who, pray tell, is Alara?”

  When he looked at her this time, his eyes held no traces of merriment. “She is the one who asked you to come.”

  -o0o-

  “We can sit down here and rest a while as we eat. My legs aren’t as strong as they once were.”

  Yesenia followed Tamsin over to two low hassocks set up on rich layers of carpet under a colorful overhead cloth that provided welcome shade. The market kept their environmental controls on the balmy side, likely to encourage just this sort of lazy behavior.

  Slow customers saw more to buy.

  Fixers, however, couldn’t permit their brains to go on vacation—and Yesenia had noted enough on their walk here to have pieced together what she should have known from the first.

  Tamsin wasn’t just a venerated elder. He was the man in charge.

  She sat and waited until he folded his legs into a configuration that would have left her permanently stuck that way, and then handed him one of the two savory pocket pastries she’d been holding.

  He set a mug of cider at her right knee and smiled, as if all that mattered in the world was this exact moment and his pleasure in her company.

  For a heartbeat, she wished, deeply, that her life could be so simple—and then she let the weight of all the reasons it couldn’t settle back on her shoulders. She’d been born into a hardscrabble existence where a lack of contingency plans got you dead. The hardscrabble part had changed when her Talent had manifested and a very annoyed Seeker had dragged her out of a back alley and into an entirely different life, but Fixers couldn’t live entirely in the present moment either, especially the rare ones who could bend space and time and Travel through them both.

  “Take a bite. Taste the spices on your tongue. Let yourself have a moment of pleasure, Director.”

  She hoped her face didn’t look as astonished as she felt. Her Talent often let her read minds quite well, but no one ever got much of a glimpse into hers.

  Tamsin laughed. “I’ve been sitting on this hassock longer than you’ve been alive. There’s not much that gets past me.”

  Too much had been getting past her. She lifted her pastry, thinking. Regardless of who Alara might be, as the leader of this particular enclave of humanity, Tamsin almost certainly had an agenda here. No one would waste a chance to have an audience with the quadrant’s highest-ranking KarmaCorp official. She eyed him carefully. “Are you going to tell me what you want now, or are you waiting for the spices to lull me into complacency?”

  He shook his head, laughing gently at her again. “I want nothing from you, Traveler, other than that you sit here with me and enjoy some of the finest food in the galaxy and ready your mind and your heart to hear what it is that Alara will tell you.”

  Her stomach was complaining in at least fifteen languages about the lack of incoming food. “I prefer to hear the pitch directly from the top.” She didn’t negotiate with underlings.

  His eyes looked a little sad. “We don’t want anything from you. We seek only to help.”

  She turned her Talent up several notches and was shocked that it read nothing but absolute sincerity from the man beside her.

  “It must be a hard life,” he said quietly. “Everyone wanting a piece of you.”

  The last thing she had expected at an out-of-the-way spaceport was empathy. She set down her uneaten pastry, suddenly shaken, and picked up the cider instead. Its sweetness nearly finished what the old man had started.

  She put down the mug sharply. There could be no cracks in the walls of Yesenia Mayes.

&n
bsp; His hand settled firmly over hers. “Stay open, mi’dama—no harm will come to you here.”

  Nobody could promise to keep a Traveler safe. She opened her mouth to say so.

  He shook his head, and now his eyes didn’t look gentle at all. They looked old and wise and as gnarled and tough as the ages. “Read the energies. You will see that I speak truth.”

  He knew an awful lot about how her Talent worked. Carefully, without letting down her guard elsewhere, she sent out a questing probe. Calling mostly on her Shaman skills, she felt the ether in the way that was hardest to explain, but for her, easiest to do.

  And found what he said she would find. A very clear, very intentional net of safety.

  Which was alarming in at least a dozen different ways. She glared at him, KarmaCorp Director in full throttle. “You have a Shaman here?”

  “Stand down.” His words nearly snapped out. “Respect what you can feel.”

  She could feel the power in him. Not Talent, but energy. Clarity. Intention. “You have a gift.” Something similar, perhaps, to what shamans had been in tribal cultures before KarmaCorp had borrowed the word and given it different meaning.

  She had heard quiet whispers of such people—but she had never met someone using their power so openly.

  Probably for good reason.

  He inclined his head. “Many here see the energies. Some can work with them.” He scanned her intently for a moment. “Melessa draws the visions she sees in her dreams.”

  She cursed herself for missing that, too. If this counted as her inaugural mission as Director, she was making a right mess of things. “Have the Seekers been giving you difficulty?” She hadn’t made it to that part of her briefings yet.

  “No.” He shook his head. “And if they do, we will tell them what we have always told them. Gifts are not Talents. Our children stay with us.” His eyes met hers again, solid and strong and making very clear that anyone who disagreed with that would be going through him first.