Jumper's Hope: Central Galactic Concordance Book 4

by Carol Van Natta

  He waved toward the clinic’s door. “I’ll drive you south to Omicono City in my ground hauler, where I’ll rent a flitter, to keep your accounts quiet. We’ll go straight to the spaceport and take the first interstellar ship off planet. They can’t kill what they can’t find. Best-case scenario, it was an unlucky accident, and we get an off-world vacation for a few days.”

  She was nonplussed. She knew he didn’t trust her, and for good reason. “Why would you do that for me?”

  He crossed his arms. “Because I’m the random factor they can’t easily trace.” He frowned. “Because it torques my jets that the CPS went to a lot of trouble to make us each think the other was dead. I want to know why.”

  CHAPTER 3

  * Planet: Branimir * GDAT: 3242.002 *

  JESS STUDIED KERZANNA as she considered his plan. Somewhere in the past four years, she’d learned to keep her thoughts and emotions off her face. She’d already surprised him by not rejecting it immediately, and not losing her temper at the whole situation. The Kerzanna he remembered chafed at retreat and devious tactics, and detested owing anyone anything, for reasons he’d never fully understood. She would never believe that he was seizing a chance few ever got: a do-over of the choice he regretted most.

  She’d taken the news of his not-dead status in stride far more quickly than he had hers. He’d always admired her practicality and ability to prioritize the essentials.

  She frowned. “The local police will have questions.”

  Jess snorted. “Constable Castro is busy.” He described what had happened with Pitt, and how Kerzanna ended up in the local clinic’s autodoc instead of evacuated to the regional medical center’s emergency ward. “The port manager probably took a data cube’s worth of holo and flat images of everything and has already cleared the landing pad for business. The pieces of the flitter are probably in a storage hangar for Castro and the insurance assessors to look at later.”

  She frowned. “What about the medic who treated me, then? Short guy, Oriental.”

  “I treated you.” He visualized the events from her perspective. “The short guy is probably Bhalodia, my neighbor. He brought your bags over.” He’d come in while Kerzanna was in autodoc twilight. She’d been thrashing around, and Jess had belatedly remembered her claustrophobia. Opening the clam-shell top had soothed her.

  He had been distracted by the nonsensical things she’d said about the afterlife and him spying on Minder Veterans Advocates, the veterans’ activist and support group she’d been heavily involved with back in Ridderth. When she’d held out her hand to him, he’d slipped his hand in hers without thought. Despite his rational-brain reservations about the whole situation, at a very fundamental level, his body remembered hers. The curve of her face still fit his palm.

  Bhalodia had bluntly shared his opinion that the flitter had been sabotaged with badly positioned explosives, and Jess trusted the assessment. Bhalodia had been fixing and flying military flitters for longer than Jess had been alive. On his way out the door, Bhalodia also told Jess that if he was smart, he’d go back to his farm and stay out of it, like Bhalodia planned to do.

  The part of him that was Jess-the-bomber agreed and pushed him to leave Kerzanna in the autodoc. Let her think she was dreaming. Her trouble isn’t ours. Jess-the-man shoved the bomber into a corner of his mind and ignored him. He didn’t used to be able to control the bleedovers nearly that well, but he’d stubbornly kept trying until he’d found techniques that worked for him. Apparently, he needed to work on control for cases when dead lovers came back to life.

  She stood. “I’ll go with your plan on two conditions.” She held up a thumb. “One, I’ll pay you back for every expense, and none of your ‘I lost the receipt’ crap.” Her chin jutted forward pugnaciously. “Fuel or recharge for your hauler, too.”

  He nodded, even as he suppressed a sigh. The CPS paid Kameleons extremely well—one of the recruitment incentives—and he’d accumulated even more money to hide away as a game, not because it meant anything to him. It bought him a quiet farm, but it couldn’t buy him a quiet mind. It couldn’t buy him a better childhood or different star lanes for his life. “I’ll send you an invoice once we’re sure no one’s tracking your accounts.” Branimir was famous for being purposefully uninterested in personal transactions of any sort, from finances to travel to information queries, and kept the bare minimum data required by the Central Galactic Concordance government. However, with a bit of effort, he could trace financial transactions, so he had to assume others could, too.

  She nodded and held up her index finger. “Second, you drop me off at the spaceport, then you go home. The last time you got involved in my drama, it got you killed.” She huffed with exasperation. “Okay, you lived, and so did I, but you know what I mean.”

  He nodded once. He’d wait to argue with her about the second condition once they got to the spaceport.

  She winced and rubbed her neck. “As much as I hate autodocs, at least they have good painkillers.”

  Jess eyed the autodoc, then the clock. “Sit a minute while I frag the autodoc’s memory of treating you.”

  It was a testament to how much she was still hurting that she sat without argument. Jumpers were notoriously unwilling to admit weakness, even if they’d just crashed a flitter, and she was a Jumper, through and through.

  He easily cracked the autodoc’s security by means of a diagnostic side gate, then told the unit the last use had been a test. Autodocs red-flagged deletions of treatment records in a dozen reports, but this one logged tests once and ignored them. Just to be thorough, he tweaked the record’s time stamp to the previous week, and adjusted the onboard chems inventory to match. While Kerzanna was still resting, he found a dusty cargo bag under a desk and took it to the supply cabinet and allowed Jess-the-medic to shop for useful medical supplies so he could continue field treatment for her.

  A faint smile played on her face as she watched him without comment. He enjoyed the unexpected freedom of not having to hide his quirky self behind the layered façade of a flat zero personality. It had kept him safe over the years from intrusive therapists and invasive telepathic minders, and sharp and suspicious CPS handlers and investigators, but brought few friends and only one lover, the woman in front of him, who had somehow seen through it.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  She stood and slung the straps of both her bags over her shoulder. “Green go.”

  They exited the clinic and checked that the door sealed tight, then walked the two blocks to where he’d left his ground hauler. She matched his long-legged stride. A phantom memory of walking with her, hand in hand, on a rare sunny day in the perpetually dank city of Ridderth made a bid for his attention, but he relegated it to the periphery of his mind, just like he did with other distracting fragments.

  She slowed at the end, exhausted but trying not to show it. Rapid-healing procedures depleted stamina, and he’d interrupted her treatment because Jess-the-bomber said trouble was already on its way, and Jess-the-man agreed.

  He helped her web into the wide passenger seat and handed her a blanket to use for a pillow. In the cabin, he stowed the medical bag and programmed the onboard map for Omicono City. His old hauler was capable of making the trip in an hour if he pushed it, but ninety minutes would do, and wouldn’t attract attention.

  As he passed the pile of rocks that marked the unofficial town perimeter, it occurred to him he’d completely forgotten the CPS meeting he’d made the special trip into town for. Something about a post-exit longitudinal study of Kameleon Corps operative veterans. He’d have to reschedule after this was over, or they’d use less polite methods. It had been phrased as an invitation, but one way or the other, the CPS always got what it wanted.

  CHAPTER 4

  * Planet: Branimir * GDAT: 3242.002 *

  RAVILORI GOSSANDORILAIKA, OR Vahan, as she preferred to be called professionally, added “taking privacy to extremes” to her long mental list of “Reasons Branimir Should Be
Planet-Poisoned.”

  A brisk springtime breeze swirled dust in patterns across the Markalan Crossing public flitter pad. She busied her fingers with sealing her protective vest to hide her annoyance with the truculent beetle of a man in front of her. “If I gave you the ID number, could you at least confirm whether or not the crashed flitter is ours?”

  She’d spun him a tale about having been hired by a mythical air service to track a stolen flitter with valuable cargo. She was ninety-percent sure the flitter was her target, because the Branimir traffic system had coughed up the record when she’d prodded it with CPS auth codes, but the middle-of-nowhere location was unexpected. It was hundreds of kilometers off course from where Nevarr’s known meeting with a rare-mineral mine customer was to take place in the Sinroth Mountains.

  The man crossed his spindly arms, evidently enjoying his petty power. “Like I said, ask the constable.” His German accent suggested he was a Branimir native. He wouldn’t even give her the constable’s personal ping ref, but he grudgingly described how to get to the office.

  “Thank you for your time,” she said politely, imagining his painful, fiery demise as she did so. She nodded her head toward her hired heavy mercenary to get her to follow, then took off toward the center of town. Cracks and wavy sections in the walkway made it obvious the tiny town had never bothered finishing its original foundation glass. She’d be surprised if the street’s solar collectors still worked.

  From what she’d been able to pry out of the sparse official traffic control records, the flitter had crashed, as expected, but the pilot had made a miracle landing instead of a kilometer-long smear of slagged parts in some farm field. Vahan had delayed Nevarr’s trip long enough to avoid the big “accident” at the mine, but had found out too late that it had been a secondary, follow-up plan, and that the primary attack plan had been to rig the flitter to explode when it dropped below a certain altitude. The orders Vahan had been given were clear: prevent the kill attempt altogether, or make sure it succeeded.

  From the moment her new boss, Dixon Davidro, had departed Branimir with his monstrous menagerie of “pets,” as he called his long-time contractors, leaving Vahan to clean up the mess that Senga Si’in Lai, his “special project,” had made, not one single thing had gone right. Vahan was not a goddamn housekeeper. She was a CPS Academy-trained shielder, with the talent to contain telepathic and telekinetic minders, and protect her non-minder boss’s thoughts from being read, twisted, or cleaned. She was a good, fast fighter and knew how to spot threats before they materialized. But he was her boss, which meant she had to smile like she respected him and put up with his warps, whims, and delusional bullshit. He should have had his top monster and enforcer, Renner, put Senga Si’in Lai down hard or permanently, not rewarded the vindictive slagger with a second chance by taking her to a lush destination resort.

  Vahan was also not a goddamn therapist. Davidro’s former employee, Neirra Varemba, was weirder than the rest of his pets, combined, and Vahan was supposed to be “evaluating” Varemba to make sure she wasn’t faking her illness. Vahan snorted. The woman willingly chose to spend what few weeks or months she had left to live in a rotting ship at the Branimir spaceport. If yesterday’s visit was anything to go by, Varemba was also a few dozen parsecs away from anything resembling sane, so how the hell was Vahan supposed to tell—ask her if she thought too much interstellar space travel turned people into minders?

  By the time Vahan was done hiking through the misbegotten town, discovering that both the constable’s office and the only medical clinic were deserted and sealed tight, she was ready to personally terminate Kerzanna Nevarr on sight, just to work off her frustration, instead of letting the hired help earn their keep. It wasn’t personal. The Jumper hadn’t done anything except be in the wrong group at the wrong time, but now that she knew someone had tried to kill her, any questions she asked might be a threat to Davidro’s special CPS project, so she had to go.

  Vahan climbed back into her rented flitter to consider her options, leaving the armored merc standing outside looking armed and dangerous to deter the asshole port manager from hassling her about moving.

  She had to assume Nevarr recognized the threat and would take steps to protect herself. If she were in Nevarr’s boots, she’d take the opportunity to leave the miserable excuse for a planet, but maybe Nevarr liked the stinking place.

  Vahan’s bracelet-style percomp interrupted her musing with the results of a priority records request, telling her a medevac capsule had transported a patient from the Markalan Crossing flitter pad to the regional medical center. She quickly programmed the center’s coordinates into the flitter’s console. Finally, her luck had turned.

  She tapped her lips thoughtfully, then sent an order through to the mercenary company. She and her hired merc companion could take care of Nevarr at the medical center, which likely had multiple penetration points and laughably bad security. However, if the medical center didn’t pan out, she wanted Branimir’s only spaceport and shuttle services covered, since Branimir was too tightfisted to have its own space station. Just to be thorough, she authorized a squad of six for adequate coverage to make sure Kerzanna Nevarr didn’t leave before Vahan got there. She knew Davidro would want her to handle the final termination herself. Mercs lacked subtlety.

  She still needed to do something about the wrecked flitter. If Nevarr had survived, so had evidence of the explosives that downed the flitter. Eventually, even lazy town constables who couldn’t bother to show up for work, or smarter insurance investigators, would see the evidence and dutifully report it. Maybe she could entice the rental company that owned it with a short-fuse offer of a premium salvage price. Otherwise, well, accidents had been known to happen in poorly maintained small-town storage units.

  She allowed herself a predator’s smile, imagining Davidro’s howl about the expenses she was racking up. It served him right for abandoning her on mind-numbing, no-redeeming-features-whatsoever Branimir while everyone else was off in the new paradise with Si’in Lai.

  CHAPTER 5

  * Planet: Branimir * GDAT: 3242.002 *

  KERZANNA WOKE TO the vibration that had lulled her to sleep. Jess’s vehicle looked to be in good shape, but the glass roadway wasn’t. Branimir wasn’t big on spending money on infrastructure. Or anything else, for that matter.

  The hauler’s passenger seat wasn’t designed for someone of her height. She’d slept in a lot less comfortable places in the service, but she’d come to appreciate civilian comforts. She sat up and awkwardly stretched her legs diagonally as she looked out the cab’s window. She massaged her sore neck to work some of the stiffness out of it.

  They were at the edge of what had to be Omicono City. The subtle change in sound from flat farming country to unprepossessing, block-formed buildings was probably what had awakened her. Her former captain had called it shark brain. Probably why she’d lived through eighteen years of the difficult, dangerous, and downright impossible missions that were stock in trade for the CPS Jumper Corps.

  “How long to the flitter port?” Her mouth tasted of drug residue and dust. She surreptitiously wiped the window she’d been leaning against with a corner of the blanket, in case she’d been drooling.

  “Twelve minutes.” Jess apparently trusted the ground hauler’s onboard comp and the city’s traffic control system, because his eyes were on her, not on the road. “Want to borrow my jacket, or need a slap patch for the pain?” He pointed to holdfasts on the hauler’s side panel where the cargo bag of medical supplies and a tan coat were hanging.

  She shook her head. “Not unless those patches you took are Jumper rated.” She snorted. “And if they are, you’ll have to carry my dead weight to the flitter.” She winced at the dryness in her throat. “I would take something to drink if you have it.”

  He paused a moment, then fished around in the storage bin between them and found a pouch, which he handed to her. “Mixed vegetable juice.”

  “That’ll do.” Sh
e activated its cold pack, unsealed it, and took several long swigs of the salty liquid, which helped quiet her complaining stomach for the moment. The thought of solid food nauseated her. Her chest was numb from the bone knitter, but the pain in her head and neck clamored for attention. The juice tasted off, and she felt detached from her twitchy body.

  She flicked her left eye to access her cybernetic stats. The controller’s readout indicated impaired reaction times and anomalous control responses, which was confirmation of the blindingly obvious. Gods of chaos, but she deeply detested autodocs. Even some big-city CPS clinics barely knew how to treat ex-Jumpers; small-town, outdated autodoc treatments were sometimes worse than the injury.

  She focused on Jess, because he looked like he was wanting to talk to her. Odd how she remembered the little things about him. Or maybe not so odd, since she’d only ever known the little things. He’d never talked about anything in his past or his Kameleon career. At the time, she’d consoled herself with the fact that he’d chosen silence over lying to her.

  “Are you safe to fly a flitter for five or six hours?”

  She pursed her lips. “Are you any better a pilot than you used to be?”

  The corner of his mouth twitched with humor. “Depends on the metric. I won’t kill us.”

  She sighed. “Sad to say, but I probably would.” She held up her hand flat and watched her fingers and wrist spasm randomly. Happytime drugs, autodoc rapid-heal protocols, Jumper metabolism, cybernetic controllers, and waster’s disease were a chaotic mix from hell, making her unfit until her systems settled down. Even her not-exactly-legal emergency capabilities would likely fail. She slumped in the seat and closed her eyes. “Goddamn autodocs.”

  Kerzanna didn’t know whether to be peeved or pleased that Jess chose the most expensive high-low flitter available. After buying out her dead partner’s heirs in their mining transport business, she’d worked hard to replenish her financial reserves, but high-end flitter rentals and full-price interstellar trips would put a noticeable dent in them. On the other hand, the flitter was spacious, and the navigator seat, complete with backup flying controls, fit her long legs and felt as comfortable as a sleep pod. Plus, the flitter was fast, meaning they’d get to the spaceport in four and a half hours or less.