Jumper's Hope: Central Galactic Concordance Book 4

by Carol Van Natta

  Jess shook his head. “Even if that were true, why would they care if we knew?”

  “My guess is they didn’t want you experimenting during your downtime, or using your talent on your handler. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself why you’ve always been good at knowing when someone is lying or is about to be violent, or why you hate crowds, or why you can sense when someone’s a minder, or why most pain and sleep drugs don’t work well or at all on you?”

  Kerzanna looked at Jess, remembering how quickly he’d come after her in the Branimir Spaceport, even after she’d dosed him with two full dormo patches.

  “And you know this because…” Jess trailed off, inviting Tuzan to fill in the rest.

  “I was once a good little Institute-trained CPS cleaner. Tightly controlled, went where they sent me, did as I was told, including making brand new Kameleons forget they even knew what a sifter was.” He thrust his chin out and stared at Jess. “Tell me I’m lying.”

  Jess held the gaze for a moment, then looked away, his face troubled. She could tell the idea bothered him.

  Tuzan rolled his eyes, then looked at Kerzanna. “Where did you find the low-profile IDs to use? We might need two more of them.”

  She held up her hands in denial. “I’m just a Jumper. Jess is the data genius.”

  At Tuzan’s questioning look, Jess took a long moment to respond. “I created them.”

  “But they have a histor… Oh, that’s why some of the cubes and arrays disagreed—you found soft insertion trusts and twisted them.” Tuzan’s eyes gleamed. “Very slick.”

  A long monotone beep startled her. She’d forgotten about the waster’s test unit on her arm. She looked at the blue numbers displayed on the tiny flat screen. She pressed the release sequence so the unit would let go of her arm, then showed the display to Jess and Tuzan.

  31%.

  Tuzan didn’t know what it meant, but Jess remembered. “It’s seven percent lower than her last test.” Thoughtful, softhearted Jess knew Jumpers didn’t cry, so he let one tear fall on her behalf before he blinked them away.

  Tuzan started to smile, but Kerzanna squared her shoulders and shook her head. “One test isn’t proof of anything. I’ll repeat it tomorrow. And I need another test unit in case this one is defective.” Miracles were for believers and magic was for fantasy fiction. “If we’re going somewhere from here, I left a bag and coat in the pub, and Jess did the same.”

  Tuzan’s gaze went inward for a moment, and then he was back. “We’ll get them to you. You were smart to split up, and we’ll keep it that way. My sister is looking for places for you tonight. I don’t know about tomorrow yet.” He caught Jess’s eye and gave him a look of sly invitation, full of interest. “Before we go, why don’t you and I create a little mischief?”

  Jess looked surprised, as he always did when he realized someone was making a pass at him, but one of his overlays rescued him. “But of course, monsieur. What did you have in mind?”

  CHAPTER 20

  * Planet: Mabingion * GDAT: 3242.021 *

  DIXON DAVIDRO HATED lists. They meant his life had become too complicated to manage in his mind, which meant he might be missing important things. He’d been plagued by the sensation of forgetting things ever since arriving in Ridderth.

  The pale, monotone color palette and well-worn furniture of the rented business condo depressed him, but he could stand anything for a few days if he had to, even no sexual encounters or audiences for them. He’d reward himself after taking care of the people who had Georgie so worried.

  Dixon pulled the list and his pen out of his bag. His CPS peers, and even his supervisor, teased him about his use of primitive technology. He encouraged them to think it was a whimsical affectation. He wrote in a code he’d learned so long ago that it was almost a second language to him. Even the most sophisticated intelligent scanners and powerful infiltration software couldn’t sniff records that weren’t in digital form. He’d learned the hard way that anything he couldn’t control had a way of coming back to bite him when least expected.

  He forced himself to sit calmly on a high stool at the kitchen area’s counter and sip the real coffee he’d had to make for himself. Lamis was busy using her CPS authority to dig into local records, and Vahan, his shielder and backup enforcer and bodyguard, couldn’t make a decent cup of coffee if her life depended on it. He’d sent her on a food and supplies run, since he didn’t want deliveries being made to the condo.

  The newest addition to his list worried him the most. Georgie, still in doom-and-gloom mode, had noticed a trending unsourced rumor in Ridderth about a mysterious government project known as Charisma. The project members had maintained perfect control for four years, and now suddenly, a few days after Nevarr and Orowitz lost themselves in Ridderth, information was leaking. Dixon didn’t believe in coincidence, and the CPS sure as hell didn’t. He needed to find and contain the leak fast, or the CPS would do it for him, making him as expendable as a dying ex-Jumper and a dumb-as-dust ex-Kameleon.

  As a consequence, he couldn’t just kill them, he had to get his hands on Nevarr to learn how she found out about the project and who she’d told. Dixon had initially underestimated Nevarr’s un-Jumper-like subtlety and craftiness, but he had her measure now and would soon have her in hand, one way or the other. He also might have underestimated Orowitz’s contribution to the pair’s continued elusiveness. Kameleons had emergency survival routines built into their bioware, and Nevarr may have inadvertently triggered his. Fortunately, all Dixon needed was a sifter to shut Orowitz down, and Dixon had one of those. Then he’d have that sifter, Zerrell, and Xan, his slightly warped pet telepath, ransack Nevarr’s mind. After that, he’d pay a local wetwork crew to dispose of both Nevarr and Orowitz, plus whoever else needed silencing, and be on his way.

  To that end, he had Renner and Xan nosing about where Jumpers liked to congregate. Nevarr probably wasn’t stupid enough to go there herself, but perhaps she’d been seen somewhere and recognized. Sachin, his cleaner, was out hiring the crew. Her addiction to helio, a highly illegal drug that bleached her skin to frosty blue-white and drained the color from her eyes, gave her instant credibility with the criminal element, no matter what planet.

  Despite Renner’s unsolicited opinion that it muddied the waters and invited freelancers to meddle in their business, Dixon had decided to continue offering the various rewards for information on the successive pseudonyms Nevarr and Orowitz had used. He’d also issued official CPS detain-and-restrain orders for them, with the best descriptions and images he had. The rewards and person-of-interest orders effectively turned the CPS offices and citizens of Ridderth into his personal surveillance network, though he’d had to pay extra for the service to sort through the inevitable flood of bad tips. As he’d pointed out to Renner, they didn’t have time to be elegant.

  Next on his list was how best to exploit the information that Renner and Xan had already uncovered about a ring of local telepaths who helped fugitive minders escape from the CPS Minder Corps and leave the planet. Breaking up the ring would look good on his record. However, based on Georgie’s cryptic pronouncements, Dixon suspected Nevarr and Orowitz might have stumbled across them, too. Maybe he could send Vahan out to investigate first, though it left him without the protection of a trusted shielder. He wouldn’t be entirely alone, but close enough to make him uncomfortable.

  Several loud thuds over his head signaled the expected arrival of a rented aircar on the building’s rooftop airpad. Zerrell was the last of the mobilized contractors to arrive. Dixon used to have more, but they’d proved too difficult and expensive to manage.

  He turned his list face down and waited for the tiny lift to disgorge its passenger. Zerrell seemed older and grayer since the last time Dixon had activated him. The man was barely one hundred and ten, and he looked it. Really, there was no excuse for people letting themselves go like that.

  “Pleasant trip?” asked Dixon.

  “Are they ever?” asked Zerrell.
He patted the bulky bag at his side. “Where am I staying?”

  “Here. Lamis will show you later. Put your things under there for now.” He waved toward the conference table they’d dragged into the kitchen for meals.

  As Zerrell did so, Dixon briefed him on the mission status and current plans, and Zerrell’s role in all of it. “How close do you need to be to trigger Orowitz’s failsafe?”

  “His what?” asked Zerrell, looking puzzled.

  Dixon frowned. “I thought you worked for the Kameleon Corps?”

  “I did, in the civilian intake department.” He looked intrigued. “What does the failsafe do?”

  “Emergency shutdown, in case one of the overlay personalities goes rogue.” Dixon now wished he’d looked more closely at Zerrell’s history before adding him to the team. An ugly thought crossed his mind. Sometimes, his staff didn’t like their assignments, and Zerrell’s loyalty was insured by fear, not willing cooperation. “You’re sure you weren’t trained on how to trigger the failsafe? It would be a shame to have to tell your family about your other career.”

  Zerrell stilled and his expression hardened. “I think I’d remember it.” Bitter reproach laced his tone. “But of course, Xan can read me and check.”

  “Of course.” Dixon sighed. He hated it when his staff—prima donnas, every one of them—got their feelings in a twist and sulked all day. He had no errands to send the depressing man on, to get him out of Dixon’s hair… but wait, he did. Morose, conservative Zerrell would be perfect.

  “I’m sending you undercover to infiltrate the ring for fugitive minders. The ring uses telepaths for communication, but Mr. Renner says the rest of their security is flawed.” Dixon liked his idea more and more. “Your primary goal is to find Orowitz and Nevarr, but while you’re there, use your talents to collect evidence on the whole operation, and get the names of other minders who have used it. Get each node to pass you on quickly to the next one.”

  “I can’t do that and be here to interrogate Nevarr.”

  “I know that,” Dixon said as patiently as he could, “but I don’t have her yet, and in the meantime, you can be useful. Get Lamis to set you up with an identity.” Dixon cocked his head, trying to see Zerrell as a suspicious stranger would. “Lose the autotailored business suit and percomp, and buy some set-size, local-style civilian clothes. And you’ll need a waterproof coat and boots, because it’s the rainy season.” He pointed toward the deep-inked, intricate marriage tattoos on the back of Zerrell’s hands and wrists. “No time to send you to a body parlor to get those removed, so we’ll make you newly single after the tragic loss of your spouse. It’ll be the reason you decided to leave the CPS.” He snorted. “That, and because they just transferred you to stinking Ridderth.”

  “What do I do if I find Nevarr or Orowitz? Or find information on where they are?”

  “Ping Mr. Renner or Lamis… no, you can’t. The ring uses tech suppressors and confiscates comm devices.” Dixon drummed his fingers on the counter and thought a moment. “Set up a passive drop—give Lamis the ping ref—and buy new disposable percomps between each node to send your reports. I’ll have Mr. Xan contact you every few hours, or when we need you to come back.” Xan’s ability to find known mental signatures and phenomenal range alone had made it worth the trouble to save him and keep him entertained. “Ask Mr. Renner for a briefing on the organization and their security. He’s escorting Mr. Xan.” Only Renner, with his natural immunity to telepaths and his unique talent to deliver pain, could keep Xan on task. Otherwise, Xan exhausted himself, searching any mind he could reach for memories of sexual encounters, since he had none of his own. He couldn’t bear to be touched.

  “How is Georgie?” Zerrell’s ordinary job, the one his family knew about, was providing therapy to traumatized children. People like Georgie were right in his star lane.

  “The same. I gave him the northeast office on the second floor. You could drop in and see him before you go. Maybe you could get him to take a shower.” Georgie disliked water, and hated the alternative sonic or mist options even more. Dixon smiled ruefully. “As it is, we’re going to have to pay an extra fumigation fee when we leave.”

  Zerrell nodded once, then headed toward the stairs. Dixon had no idea how a children’s therapist got along without a sense of humor.

  Once Zerrell was out of sight, Dixon looked at his list again. Senga Si’in Lai, his failed Charisma subject, had gotten so bad that the mercs in charge of her had been forced to drug her to keep her quiet. He wrote a notation to check that he’d provided the list of approved drugs to use. The ultra-secret research treatment had skewed some of her physiology. Dixon didn’t know why the CPS kept trying to go down the genetic alteration path. They’d only had one success, nearly two hundred years ago, and the procedure that created paracommando pathfinders—popularly known as death trackers—resulted from a lab mistake. Dixon wasn’t supposed to know that part of the history, but he’d done due diligence before tying his rising star to the high-risk-high-reward Charisma project. He still needed to put the finishing touches on his final report of Si’in Lai’s decline. After all, he had a reputation to maintain as the project’s most successful handler.

  Last on his list was a reminder to rent a secure storage unit, preferably within walking distance. A standard business condo was a poor choice for conducting interrogations and keeping bodies iced until the wetwork crew could pick them up. Dixon decided he’d take care of the rental himself, since he unfortunately knew Ridderth far better than his staff. Once again, the sense that he was forgetting something fluttered through his mind, but it wouldn’t solidify, so he ignored it.

  Since Zerrell didn’t know how to trigger the Kameleon failsafe, Dixon needed to hire a sifter who did, so he added it to his list. At least they were in the right place to do it, near Kam Corps headquarters. Plenty of active-duty Minder Corps staff did a little moonlighting when they could get away with it. Because of Ridderth’s history with the Ayorinn nonsense, the city was rife with informants, so he’d need Xan to weed them out, and Sachin to clean any inconvenient memories afterward. He really missed Neirra Varemba at times like these. Twisted memories were far harder to detect by the CPS telepathic auditors. But that ship had sailed and burned into a crisp, so he needed to move on. He quickly used his percomp to post a contract offer on a few selected nets. Considering the high fee he was offering, word would get around quickly.

  CHAPTER 21

  * Planet: Mabingion * GDAT: 3242.022 *

  JESS-THE-LABORER ostensibly surfed the newstrends on his cheap but waterproof tablet while seated at the end of the outside bench at the public transport stop, waiting for the metro. He wore a cap over his buzz-cut hair and kept his maroon hood up, despite the prediction for a sunny morning, or what passed for one in Ridderth. The other people waiting at the stop stayed under the canopy. His excuse was the desire to avoid listening to a cantankerous discussion of the politics surrounding the spectacularly failing government headquarters project. Ridderth was a cornucopia of corruption, incompetence, and shady business, which was why so many journalists made a good living there.

  The icon he’d been waiting for blinked. He moved so his body blocked anyone’s view of the tablet, then called up the data sent by his motley array of stolen camera eyes. Jess-the-bomber had helped him hijack and take control of them, and Jess had used his own programming skills to rewrite their onboard protocols so they routed their feeds through a random net path to his tablet, masquerading as flat video segments from newstrends.

  The composite images of his target, Castal’s Corner, told him the diner was a popular lunchtime destination for a variety of clientele, from mid-level corporate types to starving students. They also confirmed that the diner’s actual access points matched the records he’d been able to find. Unfortunately, like most public businesses in Ridderth, the diner used a tech suppressor that killed cameras, so he could only see the customers entering and leaving, and those who were visible through the win
dows.

  Tuzan had slightly relaxed his “off the grid” requirement after Jess had proven his skills by showing how he’d customized his percomp. For once, Jess hadn’t needed to simplify his explanations, because Tuzan turned out to have similar interests and expertise. And as with Kerzanna, Jess didn’t have to hide who he was around Tuzan. Jess liked him.

  He hadn’t liked not being able to contact Kerzanna at all for the last two days, however much he agreed with the prohibition. They had to assume the deep-pocketed CPS was behind the lucrative reward offers, which was why he and Kerzanna had agreed on the need to stay apart. The CPS’s involvement was also why Tuzan had agreed to let him use his untraceable migratory code snippets to insert the “rising trend” on the secret Charisma project. With luck, the news would distract the CPS, and if he managed to daylight enough of the project details that were now packed in his and Tuzan’s minds, thanks to Neirra, the CPS wouldn’t have a reason to kill them anymore. Besides, working on the code gave him something to do when he couldn’t sleep. The only news he had about Kerzanna was a series of test results numbers from the two waster’s test units. The units agreed, and showed another one-percent drop, but it could just be a temporary remission. If she still thought she was dying, she might leave again to protect him.

  He also hadn’t liked realizing that he was almost certainly a sifter. Even now, he felt the presence of the waiting passengers. If that had come out when he was still on Rashad Tarana, he’d have been publicly and literally crucified as a heretic, as he’d been forced to witness countless times by the time he was thirteen. The thought of being a minder of any sort terrified him on an instinctive level, but Tuzan was right in pointing out that not knowing how to control and use it made him vulnerable. It helped to think of the talent as just another bleedover personality to manage.