Overload Flux

by Carol Van Natta

  “It can’t wait?” He couldn’t keep the reluctance out of his tone.

  “No, but I’ll make it quick. You need to get any samples in custody, anyway.”

  He started to say there hadn’t been time to collect any, but then he remembered the unidentified squibs.

  “Fine,” he said, and disconnected. “Morganthur, we have to stop by the office first.”

  She nodded and changed lanes. She said nothing the rest of the trip, for which he was grateful.

  * * * * *

  The executive suite of La Plata’s president was palatial, designed to simultaneously impress visitors and make them comfortable. Mairwen had never been there before and didn’t want to be there now. She suppressed the uncharacteristic urge to fidget.

  The meeting shouldn’t have involved her, and yet there she was, becoming a known name and face to the company president. Foxe wasn’t helping.

  “Getting the warehouse’s security cube was Morganthur’s idea,” he said, pointing her direction.

  Zheer reflexively glanced at her with a slightly raised eyebrow. Mairwen kept her expression blank.

  “Well done,” Zheer said, then returned her gaze to Foxe. “The analyst on call sent preliminary data trends to your display.”

  La Plata needed to hire a better photographer, because Zheer’s official picture didn’t do her any more justice than Foxe’s had. Zheer’s patrician features, deep black hair, and slanted eyes spoke of an Oriental heritage, and she had an undercurrent of strength. Her age was impossible to gauge. Despite the late hour, she was dressed as if for a board meeting.

  Although Mairwen sat and listened politely, underneath she was irritated. She didn’t care that Juno Viszla Casualty, La Plata’s insurance company client, was trying to get out of paying more claims from Centaurus Transport. She didn’t need to know that the murder victims, Balkovsky and Schmidt, had been looking into a series of thefts, or that they’d notified Zheer earlier that night they were investigating a fresh break-in at the warehouse. Foxe and Zheer should have let Mairwen wait with the vehicle so she could take Foxe home, then get back to her ordinary life. The life where low-level uniformed security guards worked the graveyard shift, and didn’t have meetings in plush executive offices that smelled of expensive coffee, leather, and a hint of smoke.

  Mairwen was glad Foxe was looking less distressed than he had in the warehouse. It made it easier to be annoyed with him now. At least he had the good sense not to talk about how she’d helped search the bodies, or that she knew what forceblades could do, or what mister wounds looked like. Her background records were as average and boring as she could make them, and she couldn’t afford the chance that someone smart might notice the discrepancy between her life on paper and her real life. Someone like Foxe, whose keen intuition was off the charts.

  Even though he was plainly exhausted and distracted, he’d quickly seen a pattern in the thefts that suggested the real targets were Loyduk Pharma vaccine shipments, not the shipping company itself. She wouldn’t be the least surprised if Foxe turned out to be a minder, some rare type that the Citizen Protection Service hadn’t yet found a way to exploit. Which made him all the more dangerous, beyond the fact that her physical and sensory awareness of him hadn’t faded. She needed to get away from him soon.

  Zheer opened her display, then gave Foxe a measured look.

  “I’m making you the lead for this. I know you don’t like working murder cases, but you were damn good at them. We just lost two top-notch investigators. La Plata will be picking up the tab for the murder investigation for now, but I’ll work on getting Juno Vizla Casualty to pay for it. Hand off or subcontract your other cases. I want you on this full time.”

  Foxe’s expression darkened, and Mairwen thought he might be about to object. Apparently so did Zheer, because she stood up and leaned in toward him, fists on the desk. “No arguments, Luka. I am beyond angry at whoever killed my friends and yours, or had it done. Go find them for us.”

  After a moment, Foxe nodded, his reluctance plain. “Is that all?”

  “For now,” she said, seemingly unperturbed by his icy tone. “Go home and get some rest.”

  She waved toward the door, signaling the end of the meeting. Foxe stood and grabbed his greatcoat, and Mairwen followed suit. She watched him surreptitiously, wondering how he was taking Zheer’s hardnosed attitude, which was less considerate of a star employee than Mairwen would have expected. More than anything, he looked stunned.

  She slung the strap of his small forensic kit over her shoulder as he grabbed his travel bag. He nodded thanks, but she wasn’t doing it for him. The faster he left the executive suite and the sooner she got him home, the faster she’d be out of sight and forgotten.

  The rest of Mairwen’s night didn’t go any better than it started. After driving Foxe to his townhouse and returning the vehicle to the office, she discovered the company garage was closed, as it was occasionally. Her neighborhood wasn’t safe for new-looking vehicles, even with upgraded security features, so she parked it near the office. Dispatch told her they had no orders on what she should do for the rest of her shift, so she took the metro home, where she cleaned her apartment, tried to read but couldn’t focus, and did reps on her force isolation exerciser until the garage reopened at seven.

  She parked the vehicle in an available stacker slot, then pinged dispatch that she was signing out. They pinged her back promptly with an order to report to her supervisor before leaving.

  Malamig’s office was on the first floor, near the La Plata building’s back entrance. He was only just hanging up his coat when she arrived.

  “Sit. What did you do last night?” His expression was mild, but his tone had an unexpected note of hostility. He sat at his immaculately arranged desk and aligned a cup of hot coffee with the edge of his deskcomp.

  “Should I file a report?” she asked. Her usual assignments required shift activity reports, so perhaps he was displeased because she hadn’t submitted one.

  “If Investigation Division wants one, they can request it through proper channels. It’s bad enough I have to special bill them so your salary doesn’t come out of my budget. Who did you talk to? I want to know why Investigation asked for you without going through me.”

  Good question, she thought, but if Malamig didn’t know, she doubted she’d ever learn the answer. She shrugged. “Dispatch sent orders.”

  “Yeah, I’ve already had a little chat with them.” His narrowed eyes and thinned lips told her dispatch probably hadn’t enjoyed the exchange. He leaned back and crossed his arms. His chair creaked as he rocked.

  “Company policy says I have to give you a compensatory day off, so I’ll have to take you off your current assignment.”

  “I’ll waive—” she began, but he interrupted.

  “Too late; I’ve already changed the roster.” The creaking stopped, and he gave her a smug, almost taunting smile. “Next time Investigation calls you, maybe you’ll think to check with me first.”

  Mairwen gathered his intent was to punish her for her part in what he perceived as a challenge to his authority, regardless of her blamelessness, and was using company policy as his weapon. Before she could answer, he leaned forward in his chair, feet stomping flat on the floor. “And don’t get any ideas of working for Foxe or Investigation Division, either. I say who goes, and it won’t be you ever again.”

  That was the best thing he could have told her. She almost smiled. “Understood.”

  He looked nonplussed by her response, as if he’d been expecting an argument, maybe even hoping for one. She’d heard rumors he enjoyed exercising power over his subordinates, but she hadn’t experienced it until today. She presumed it would soon blow over and he’d go back to ignoring her. To most of the night-shift employees, he was just a name on procedure memos.

  He waved her away dismissively as he woke his deskcomp. “You can go. I’ll have dispatch ping you when I find a new assignment for you.”

  She l
eft his office and started to leave the building, then changed her mind. Since she was already there, with unexpected free time, she went to the Tech Division on the second floor and surrendered her percomp for updating. They loaned her a thincomp and told her to come back at eleven.

  Since she didn’t have a vehicle, there was no point taking the forty-minute metro ride home, only to have to turn around and come back almost immediately. She’d get home and to bed later than usual, but she didn’t usually need much sleep.

  With no office of her own, she cooled her heels in the employee lounge area and got caught up on some administrative work. She even wrote a shift report on the previous night, in case Malamig changed his mind. She didn’t want anything unusual in official records, so she phrased it to imply her role had been little more than chauffeur and door guard.

  Fifty minutes later, a co-worker she remembered from previous assignments and more recent company meetings came in. The woman had a fruit cube and spoon in hand and plopped on the well-worn but durable couch. Beva Rienville, if Mairwen remembered the last name right, was a breezy, generously built woman with smooth chocolate skin and a lilting accent that Mairwen recognized as a French variant. Beva was the most congenial, sociable person Mairwen had ever met on the night shift, or anywhere else, for that matter. Beva insisted on using first names immediately whenever she met anyone.

  “Mairwen Morganthur! Comment vas? How are you? Don’t see you in the office much, at least during daylight hours.”

  Clearly Beva had a better social memory than Mairwen, who needed sensory cues, usually scent or sound, to remember people’s names. Keeping her extraordinary senses dulled to near unconscious levels had its disadvantages.

  “No,” agreed Mairwen.

  “Still like working in the field?”

  At Mairwen’s nod, Beva smiled. “Good for you. I never looked good in the uniform like you do, and I got tired of them forgetting I was even on the planet. Besides, my wife wanted me home on time, and I missed our kids. And now I’m up for a promotion.” She took a bite of yellow fruit. “Mind you, office work has its downside. Tech is upgrading the network, and half the time, we may as well have dumb kiosks at our desks.” She rolled her eyes. “Hard to get work done when you can’t get to your work, savez? Know what I mean?”

  “Yes,” said Mairwen. Should she say something else? She’d never gotten the hang of chatting.

  “Does it smell like sour coconut in here to you?”

  “I have a poor sense of smell,” said Mairwen, a lie she’d told so often she almost believed it herself.

  “Probably Junnila’s breakfast curry again. And speaking of deadly,” she said with a smile at her own joke, “did you see in the news where the NVP pandemic might be hitting Rekoria in the next couple of months? If it does, I’m not coming into the office again until they find a frellin’ cure. They can fire my grand cul. No job is worth the chance one of my co-workers might bring it in for ‘show and share.’”

  Mairwen couldn’t think of anything to say to that, but Beva didn’t seem to mind. She continued her meandering conversational monologue another nine minutes, content with Mairwen’s willingness to listen and respond occasionally.

  After Beva left, Mairwen spent some time reading intergalactic news, which she’d been lax in keeping up with because it never changed much. The Central Galactic Concordance now had 506 member planets, and three new frontier planet candidates. Concordance Command Space Division was again cracking down on jack crews who preyed on space freighters, stations, and spaceports. A sensational non-fiction publication about a horrific crime last year continued to break sales records. A Citizen Protection Service proposal to require a round of additional minder skills testing for all citizens at age twenty-one was voted down by the High Council. A representative for the Concordance Ministry of Health assured the public that a vaccine against NVP 70 was one of their top priorities, and the public mustn’t panic.

  Mairwen snorted at that last item. If Beva’s declaration was anything to go by, the ministry was trying to load ground cargo on a ship that had already gone interstellar transit.

  Unaccustomed to sitting for long, Mairwen killed more time by taking a walk around the block twice, despite the blustery autumn wind. She regretted that her uniform and boots weren’t appropriate attire for using the company gym or going for a short run.

  When she finally traded the thincomp for her updated percomp near lunchtime, Tech apologized for how long it had taken, what with network contractors under foot and getting in everyone’s way. She stuffed the percomp in her topcoat pocket and headed downstairs to the northeast exit, which was closer to the neighborhood metro station. If she was lucky, she’d be home and in bed in an hour.

  She heard her name called just as she got to the door. She suppressed a sigh as she turned and walked back down the hall to where Malamig stood outside his office door.

  He was glaring at her, red-faced. “Did you tell Investigation Division that you were available?”

  This was not good. “No, I did not.”

  Malamig looked taken aback by the strength of her denial. “Well, somebody did. They want you again tomorrow. Day shift security detail for Foxe.” His resentment was palpable.

  She was sorely tempted to refuse the assignment, but doing so would give Malamig something to use against her later, and maybe even cause Foxe to come looking for her.

  “Where and when?” She knew it’d been a colossal mistake to feel sorry for Foxe and help him last night. Nothing good ever came from good deeds.

  “Check your percomp,” Malamig huffed. “They copied you on the order directly.” Another breach in protocol, apparently. He poked a crooked finger toward her face. “Don’t get used to this. You haven’t earned it. Security Division is the financial engine of this company. Investigation has no right to poach my staff.”

  He dismissed her and slammed his office door shut.

  Late that evening, after a few hours’ sleep and a longer run than she’d planned because she needed it, Mairwen paced in her small apartment. She was restless and full of resentment and other, less easily identifiable emotions. She regretted that she didn’t need as much sleep as other people, because it gave her time to brood.

  She hoped Malamig got what he wanted. He was a hidebound jerk, but he managed the Security Division schedule and assignments well, and he usually ignored her. Besides, if he got the director’s position that he’d reportedly been bragging that he was toplisted for, he’d no longer be her problem.

  Foxe was another matter. To quote a saying she’d once heard, he was nine yards of trouble.

  Eleven hours from now, she was to check out a company vehicle and meet Foxe at the office, then accompany him wherever he wanted to go. She didn’t want to be his company. She didn’t even want to be in enclosed spaces with him, where the sounds and scents of him were too intense. He was dangerously smart and dangerously… tempting. She’d caught herself entertaining idle thoughts of how it would feel to touch his skin, or what his mouth would taste like. It was an involuntary and inconvenient hormonal response to his presence. She’d seen it in others, and read about it, but it was the first time she’d experienced anything like it herself.

  She supposed she should be grateful to regain that small bit of normality. It had been four years since she escaped from the Citizen Protection Service, but they’d had nineteen years to burn out most of her humanity. They’d given her the ability and knowledge to survive and succeed in the harshest of conditions, but no useful skills to do ordinary, civilized things, such as have a friendly conversation. Much less how to navigate attraction.

  Exasperation coursed through her. She’d only spent a combined total of about three hours with Luka Foxe, but thanks to her suddenly runaway senses, she already knew the cadence of his walk, the timbre of his voice, the smell of his soap. She liked that he had a brain and knew how to use it, but it made her vulnerable to his powerful intuition. If anyone could uncover her secrets, he cou
ld, and it would likely get her killed.

  Since her sex drive was going to wake from the dead whether she wanted it to or not, why couldn’t it have picked a nice, stupid person?

  The only safe course, she finally decided, was to do the job asked of her but nothing more. Foxe would conclude she was useless to him and send her back to the Security Division. Malamig would be happy to get his way, and Mairwen could go back to the safe, quiet anonymity of the night shift, and forget how proximity to Foxe made her feel.

  CHAPTER 3

  * Planet: Rekoria * GDAT 3237.028 *

  Luka hadn’t expected to be back at the planetary spaceport quite so soon, and not in the middle of a workday. The huge port was teeming with crowds of people, some in a hurry to get somewhere, some doing their jobs, some waiting. He’d never cared for crowds, and especially not since his talent had flared. More than half the people were carrying one or more weapons in holsters, rigs, sheaths, and pockets, which he still wasn’t used to even after a year of living in Etonver. The city didn’t even require biometric safeties on any of them.

  His eventual destination was the food court commons, the public place where the informant wanted to meet. The unlooked-for informant that Zheer had sent him to meet, in Leo Bankovsky’s place.

  For now, he stood on the pedestrian bridge above to get the lay of the land. Morganthur stood quietly to the side and a couple of paces behind him, as had been her habit so far. Her dark green civilian suit, a long jacket over a buttoned shirt and pants, didn’t fit perfectly, so she probably bought it set-sized instead of from an autotailor. He wondered if she didn’t have the money or didn’t care. At least it and her light overcoat concealed any weapons she might be carrying besides the wrist knife he’d seen at the warehouse. Her expression and body stance were neutral, but he had the feeling she was very aware of her surroundings.

  He hadn’t planned on bringing Morganthur today, except he’d been in a bloody-minded mood the day before. He’d mostly forgotten about her after the dead-of-night meeting when Zheer had forced him into leading the case. He owed Zheer for giving him a job and working around his… eccentricities. If he really wanted off the hook, he’d have to tell her the truth about his talent, and he wasn’t willing to take the chance that she’d consider him impaired. The case was too important to give to anyone else. Zheer knew he’d been a lead investigator before, and had the record to prove it. La Plata’s top investigator had been Leo Balkovsky, a mid-level finder who made it out of the Minder Corps of the Citizen Protection Service more or less sane, but he’d been gutted like a fish in the Centaurus warehouse. Luka missed Leo’s good-natured teasing and confident leadership with painful intensity.