Jumper's Hope: Central Galactic Concordance Book 4

by Carol Van Natta

  The internal chrono built into her Jumper systems said she still had two hours before liftoff, and a sensation of being watched had her shuffling her feet faster to disappear into the crowd. She’d learned the hard way to pay attention to the subtle cues that her subconscious noticed while her mind was wandering. She slipped through the crowd toward the south stairway, but regretted it the closer she got. Burn marks and shiny beamer scars said the area had been a battleground within the last week. Eventually, scavengers would clean out the piles of slagged metal and glass, but until they did, only a narrow cleared path led to the stairs.

  She turned away and caught furtive movement to her left. Merc, said her subconscious, ducking behind a scorched pillar. She snapped her fingers as if she’d remembered something and moved right, only to catch a glimpse of another merc, a wide-hipped woman in the same dull orange uniform tunic, turn toward a vendor stall.

  Kerzanna spun quickly and headed briskly toward the stairs. The moment she rounded a ruined stall, she poured on the speed and bolted down the stairs three at a time, using the handrail to help control her descent. She pushed off the landing wall with her feet to manage the turn and pounded down the rest of the stairs.

  More, taller piles of debris indicated the raid had been bigger than she thought. Spotty lighting over the deserted area made it hard to tell how to hide without boxing herself in. A noise from above sparked her into action. She dropped her bag and covered it with a pile of ruined sheeting, then glided quietly behind a collapsed booth, where she slowly, quietly freed a fifty-centimeter length of stiff ceramic pipe from its connectors. She checked to make sure no reflections gave away her position, then twitched her left eye to access her cybernetic readouts and got ready to activate the hidden switch.

  The CPS modified Jumper bodies with built-in systems to increase their speed and strength, among other things, but when Jumpers retired, the CPS deliberately ramped them down to normal human capabilities. Fortunately, there were ways around it, for a price. As soon as she’d escaped the Mabingion Purge, she’d found a shady body shop on a shadier outlier planet to give her a controllable ramp-up. It was a rough ride and didn’t play well with her cybernetic hip and thigh, but it was better than dying.

  She pushed back her hood so she could hear better and took three, long, calming breaths to quell her emotions. She needed the speed and clarity that relaxation brought, not the mind-numbing tension of adrenalin.

  She got a glimpse of boots and brown uniform pants as the male and female mercs descended the stairs.

  They were professional enough not to give themselves away by talking, but one of them wheezed and the other carried something that jangled softly, so she knew when they arrived at the bottom and that they were splitting up to search.

  The jangling merc came her way. Instinct told her to move left.

  A man’s voice muttered in a language she didn’t know. He was a few steps away from discovering her.

  “Down,” a telepathic voice said in her mind, and she went down on one knee even as she questioned why she did.

  The merc’s boot crunched on something that cracked loudly, drawing a startled oath from him.

  “Now.” The mental word came with a clear overhead image of exactly where the merc was. Kerzanna rose up into his space and smashed the side of his head with her pipe. He cried out and stumbled back. She wasn’t fast enough to avoid his flailing hand, the one that held a phaseknife. Burning pain exploded in her forearm as he fell to his hands and knees.

  She snap-kicked his pointed chin with her hard boot, and he collapsed. She bent quickly to relieve him of the phaseknife, a holstered beamer, and a neurowhip, then moved to retreat behind the ruined booth, but the voice in her head had other ideas.

  “Right, behind the green.” An image came with it.

  Kerzanna stuffed the weapons in her pockets as she stepped carefully to the right, looking for the slagged green booth. Too bad the beamer had a biometric safety that prevented her from using it. She ignored the pain and tried to control the adrenalin threatening to shut down her higher thinking. Survive now, she told herself. Ask questions later.

  A light flickered to her left. She oozed into the shadows and stilled, listening intently. A soft groan from somewhere behind her said the male merc was on his way to regaining consciousness.

  A quiet wheeze and a footstep was all the warning she had that the female merc had found her, but it was enough. She turned into the woman’s strike at her shoulder, blunting its power, and rammed her elbow into the woman’s midsection. The flexin armor under the orange uniform absorbed some of the blow, but it still distracted her long enough for Kerzanna to engage her internal ramp-up. Power surged through her, along with the expected excruciating pain in her spine and right knee where the cybernetics interfaced with her flesh. It never got any easier.

  The merc went for a fast controlling headlock, but Kerzanna ducked under, then up, using her superior height to put her head and neck out of reach. The merc dodged Kerzanna’s flashy jab to her jaw but grunted when the pipe’s strike on her unprotected thigh hit home. Kerzanna stepped back into the open area. If she could get to the stairs…

  The merc launched a flurry of kicks to cover herself as she pulled a needler from her belt holster. Kerzanna snaked a quick shot with her pipe to force the woman to raise that arm to defend, then struck the woman’s hand. The needler dropped.

  The woman snarled as she connected a sweeping side kick to Kerzanna’s right knee with a sickening crunch, sending Kerzanna stumbling sideways past a pile of scorched fabric. She fell onto the injured knee, and it froze. Damage warnings popped into her cybernetic display. So much for a quick escape up the stairs. The merc pulled a sonarc out of a cargo pocket and powered it.

  Kerzanna reached for the serenity she desperately needed to ease the tension in her leg so it would work with the cybernetic interface instead of fighting it.

  “You’re zeroed. Stay down,” said the merc in German-accented English, suggesting she was a Branimir native. “It’s only a detain order unless you escalate.” She shook her bruised hand and winced.

  “Who wants me?” Kerzanna took a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing all her tension to drain. The ramp-up power crackled like prickly static electricity along her nerves. Her hands shook.

  The merc shrugged. “Outlander.” To the proudly insular people of Branimir, that could mean anything, from someone just off the shuttle to someone who’d been around for ten years. Without taking her eyes off Kerzanna, the merc opened a pouch pocket on her belt and pulled out a loop restraint. “Wrists.” The merc’s toss landed the loop near her foot.

  “Make her come closer to you,” said the voice in Kerzanna’s head. She covered her surprise by dropping her head as she bent down for the loop.

  The woman took one step closer. “Slow,” she warned.

  “More,” said the voice. Kerzanna hated feeling vulnerable, but her knee was still frozen and the voice had helped her disable the other merc. She deliberately fumbled the loop so it popped out of her grasp and landed a few dozen centimeters away.

  “Jumpers.” The merc woman’s tone held an abundance of exasperation as she stepped closer and pointed the sonarc’s barrel at Kerzanna’s ribs. The focused sonic wave would leave a massive bruise, and break bones if left on long enough. Kerzanna clenched her teeth against the pain she knew was coming.

  Suddenly, the scorched pile of fabric moved, and a skeletal hand shot out and grabbed the merc’s calf. The merc barely had time to look dismayed before she collapsed like someone had tripped her off-switch.

  The hand belonged to a bone-thin black woman with shock-white hair and a face that looked older than the volcanic cavern. She struggled to her feet, apparently hampered by a stiff torso and stooped shoulders. Her elbows and ankles looked oversized because the rest of her was so thin. Her shapeless, lumpy dress was only slightly less stained and tattered than the ruined fabric at her filthy feet.

  The woman motio
ned impatiently at Kerzanna. “Up. No time. We walk fast.”

  “Give me a few seconds.” Kerzanna dropped her pipe to massage her synthskin thigh, just above the knee on the floor, but it was like squeezing a sandbag, with zero neurofeedback from her cybernetic processor.

  The woman hobbled to where the male merc was stirring and put her filthy bare foot on his leg. “Quiet, noisy fish.” He went inert.

  The woman turned back to Kerzanna and tilted her head sharply sideways, like a crow. “Ramp down, pa thidi.” The accent to her broken English was odd and unidentifiable, and the last words sounded like Mandarin but weren’t.

  Kerzanna hesitated, then nodded. She didn’t trust the woman, but she didn’t distrust her, either. Questions could wait. She stiffened her back to force herself to stay upright during the wooziness and momentary tunnel vision that always happened when her system returned to normal operation. It didn’t deplete her new, long-lasting cybernetic power source like it used to, but she’d need food and downtime soon. The knee stayed stubbornly frozen. She pivoted on her dead knee so she could reach a length of plasteel to use as a temporary crutch.

  The old woman frowned, then hobbled close enough to touch Kerzanna’s left knee. She was barely taller when standing than Kerzanna was on her knees. Soothing energy flooded through her. The frozen knee unlocked, and the red warning notice in her cybernetic controls blinked out. Kerzanna stood cautiously, but the knee operated perfectly. She could feel the neurofeedback from her cybernetic thigh again.

  What in chaos was a top-level minder healer doing in the slums?

  “Come.” A crafty look crossed the woman’s face. “I hire you.” She pointed up to Kerzanna and down to herself. “Guard.”

  She stepped back and turned to hobble into the wreckage of the destroyed stalls. She slowed to stroke bony fingers down a bedraggled length of rainbow-colored bunting and pull a piece of it to caress her face, then looked up and whistled a distinctive pattern. A flying spy eye floated down into view. It explained the overhead images the woman had sent. Kerzanna didn’t see the matching viewer, but the cloud of hair and shapeless clothing could be hiding anything. The woman snatched the camera out of the air like it was a pesky insect and started off again.

  Kerzanna considered her options. Stay and find out who hired the mercs, assuming they knew, or hide and hope they didn’t have merc friends. Or she could follow the woman who was obviously a telepath as well as a healer. Who had felled a healthy merc in two seconds. Who might be an escapee from a mind shop.

  Who had saved her ass.

  Curiosity would probably be the death of her one day, but she had a soft spot for fractured people. Besides, an old, crippled woman would be easy pickings in the slums. Maybe Kerzanna’s presence would scare away an opportunist or two.

  She crossed to the pile where she’d hidden her bag, marveling at how comfortable her knee felt. She stopped at the female merc’s unconscious body long enough to take the needler, another beamer, the sonarc, and the restraint loop. She stuffed the collected armament into her bag, then slung it across her body. The beamers and the sonarc had biometric safeties that made them useless to her, but at least the downed mercs would have to go back to their armory for more before resuming the hunt. After a moment’s consideration, she slid the neurowhip she’d taken from the other merc into her jacket pocket. She was out of practice using one, but it was better than nothing.

  With her longer stride, she easily caught up with the short, gaunt woman who might be her new employer. Kerzanna pulled up her hood and stayed several steps behind, partly out of respect, and partly because the woman exuded a nose-numbing stench of sweat, urine, and decay. She muttered in what sounded like Mandarin but wasn’t, and jerked her head and shoulders like she was dodging things only she could see.

  Kerzanna tried to remember the layout of this level of the slum market, but she’d had little reason to visit it when she’d lived below. She had no need for illegal chems, freelance sex workers, or down-and-out mercs who couldn’t hack regular gigs, and no interest in the numerous informal fighting events. All she could do was follow the birdlike woman through the tangle of aisles, alleys, and ancient storage containers that served as dusty stores and makeshift offices. She slouched and hunched her shoulders a little, so as not to look so much like a Jumper or offer an unspoken challenge to people looking to catch the eye of talent scouts for the fight promoters.

  Kerzanna began to doubt her companion’s need for a guard. Despite the woman’s disability and obvious vulnerability, sellers and locals studiously looked away from her or stepped out of the way. Kerzanna ignored the covert inquisitive glances at her and watched for trouble.

  It came in the form of a shark-faced man in a cheap flash suit and the entitled swagger of someone much richer and prettier. He’d been leaning indolently against a shop counter until his eyes lit on her charge. He glanced at Kerzanna, but obviously dismissed her as a non-player. At the right moment, he thrust himself directly into her companion’s path and sneered. “Crazy Maisie.”

  Kerzanna kept her head down as she slid the neurowhip out of her pocket and let its barbed end fall to the side of her leg.

  The woman he’d called Maisie started to step around him, but he blocked her again. “Ya’hudeh is looking for you. Your dues are way past due.” He gave her a toothy grin as he opened his vest to show her a lethal-looking high-res beamer in a quick-release holster.

  Maisie spat on his glowing red shoe, causing it to short out.

  Kerzanna switched on the neurowhip and checked the thinning crowd for more trouble or the port police.

  The man snarled and grabbed Maisie’s thin, naked arm with a vice-like grip, spinning her sideways.

  Astonishingly, Maisie gave him a wide grin. “Thank you.”

  The man went rigid and his eyes glazed over with naked terror. Maisie reached up with her free hand and patted his cheek like he was a child. “Dream, little bottom feeder, and remember.”

  His body and expression lost tension, but he stood, frozen. After about ten seconds, Maisie peeled his fingers off her upper arm, then posed him, forming his fingers in a rude gesture and inserting his middle finger up his nose. She reached into the man’s vest to pull the beamer out and handed it to Kerzanna like it was a dead sewer rat.

  Bemused, Kerzanna added it to the collection in her bag as she glanced around. The few people still in the area had found the ceiling or their feet suddenly fascinating.

  Maisie started off again, and Kerzanna followed as she switched off the neurowhip and put it back in her pocket. The stasis box into which she’d shoved all her questions was bursting at the seams.

  At last, they came to a wide set of doors that led into the interstellar ship dock section. Maisie waved a hand over a battered but sturdy biometric reader, and the doors opened without hesitation.

  Kerzanna knew the area well and felt the tension in her shoulders ease once they stepped over the threshold. Maisie appeared to be headed to the dry dock, where the original architects had taken advantage of the humongous cavern with its open roof to create a cliff-dweller design. The builders had roughed in twenty levels and hundreds of berths, but only finished about a third of them with platforms, airlocks, and hallway access. They rode a clear freight lift down to the bottom level, the widest part of the cavern, mostly used for hangar-queen ships that would never fly again.

  They crossed paths with a few technicians and ship crew, who avoided making eye contact with either her or Maisie. The farther from the lifts they got, the more debris and ash-gray volcanic dust lined the hallway, and the more sporadic the lighting. At a scarred, unmarked airlock that was intended for cargo handling bots instead of humans, Maisie glanced furtively both ways, then lifted the corner of a rotting crate to reveal a biometric reader. She placed her bare left foot on it, then entered a sequence into the holo display that appeared. The airlock door slid open slowly but silently.

  The short woman ducked through and beckoned. “Come.”r />
  Kerzanna hesitated. For some reason, she trusted the birdlike woman, and it bothered her that she did. Her options, however, were few, and she needed a place to stay out of sight for a while.

  She bent over at the waist to enter into what turned out to be the common room of an ancient interstellar ship. The airlock door closed behind her. Her host crossed to rummage in a dented crate.

  Kerzanna had never been in a ship this old, but she’d seen history holos. Two hundred years had worn off the shiny details, leaving ghostly images of the luxurious appointments that had once graced the interior. Its current decor was trash treasures.

  Maisie grabbed Kerzanna’s wrist and put a small tech suppressor in her hand. “Hold.” The tech suppressor blinked as the woman produced a modern tech scanner. She visibly relaxed after a few moments and turned the scanner off.

  She took the suppressor back and looked up at Kerzanna, then pointed to a fold-down bench with gutted padding. “Sit. You’re make my neck hurt.” The smooth, unaccented Standard English was unexpected.

  Kerzanna tested the bench with part of her weight before sitting on the edge. She pulled her bag around to her lap. Her arm burned like fire from the phaseknife wound, and the hole in her jacket sleeve was wet with blood. Her right knee was sore and swelling, but at least it was mobile.

  The close quarters of the once-elegant ship’s common room made the stench from her host unavoidable. Kerzanna tried to keep her breaths shallow as the woman dug through another crate of what looked like light-drive engine parts. She was back to muttering in her non-Mandarin.

  Kerzanna’s curiosity made her speak. “What should I call you?”

  The woman straightened with a wince and turned to face Kerzanna. “Neirra. Are you squeamish?”

  “Not usually.”

  “Good. I hate wearing this.” Neirra pulled her dress off over her head and dropped it on the floor. She was naked underneath, except for battered and patched bracelet-style percomp and a nasty-looking bag stuck to her belly. She pulled it off and dropped it into a larger bag, which she sealed. Some of the stench in the room dissipated. The malodorous bag was certainly an effective incentive for people to keep their distance.