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

by Faye, Audrey

  Raven knew she could have stayed home. KarmaCorp believed they found all the people who could move the energies in special ways, but she knew it wasn’t true. The People had kept more than one safe in their midst—and kept alive more ways of knowing the world than any corporation could ever understand. But Aurie had left when KarmaCorp had come for her, and when Raven had begun manifesting her gifts, Grandmother had sent for Aurie and they had taken Raven deep into the woods and up one of the highest mountains and given her the choice.

  She had known she was meant to come, just like Aurie and so many others before her.

  The People were a rich source of Talent.

  Aurie said they would call her a Shaman here, and not to be shocked. That word didn’t mean what it did to the People—it described her gift, nothing more.

  Still, it was a word she associated with wisdom and leadership and long years, not a word for a girl, even one who felt things and saw things that many others didn’t. That was merely an accident of birth. What she did with it would be what mattered—whether she honored what she had been given.

  She had chosen to honor like Aurie did—by working with KarmaCorp. By serving the greater good on worlds far beyond her own so that one day, she could return to the People and soak in the wisdom of the grandmothers and know that she had done well.

  Raven looked at Yesenia Mayes one more time. She could feel the squeaky feeling that sometimes happened in her head when a message from the spirit grandmothers wanted to get out. Maybe the boss lady understood about spirits, but if she did, she wasn’t wearing any of the usual clues, and something about this planet kept reminding Raven to keep those words inside.

  Even if the Director’s belly already wore a spirit web that was fierce and strong for a child that had not yet been conceived.

  Raven sent a gentle pulse toward the babe that would be. I see you.

  The spirit web wrapped around the boss lady’s belly bobbed a little. Message received.

  A small sound came from beside her as red hair and bright eyes moved in a little closer. Iggy was watching Raven’s face, her fingers still moving, even though the rest of her was settling into stillness. “You’re one of the quiet thinkers, huh?”

  “No.” Raven grinned. Iggy’s spirit web was awesome, and it said they were going to be fast, fierce friends. “I just wait until I have something important to say.”

  “Not me. I say whatever comes out of my mouth. Mostly I get distracted, though. Mama says I have the focus of a hyperactive grasshopper.”

  Grasshoppers weren’t something Raven had ever seen, but she knew about animal medicine. And she had the oddest feeling nobody had ever taken Iggy seriously enough. Which was foolish, because the Dancer’s spirit web spoke of flitting and flying, but it also spoke of strength and complexity and a soul that could see all the things.

  Maybe that was why Iggy’s fingers moved so much. “You’re going to be a really important Dancer.” Raven froze when she realized she’d spoken out loud. Aurie had warned her about that too, about saying things as if she knew they were true. She said it could spook people.

  Red curls tilted almost sideways. “Cool. How do you know?”

  Apparently, Iggy didn’t spook too easily. That was a good thing in a best friend. “I just know stuff sometimes.”

  “That’s what Shamans do.” Tee had joined them, and she leaned in, putting an arm around each of their shoulders.

  Raven looked around behind her. Kish was still sitting on the boulder, her arms around her knees, looking like she would kill the first person who got any closer. Probably because some of the trainees were milling around now and threatening to do just that.

  Iggy made a soft, sympathetic sound. “She still looks really scared.”

  Kish looked about as scared as a hungry rattlesnake. Even her spirit web was mad.

  “She’s a long way from home.” Tee’s voice was quiet, and it sounded very grown up. “She doesn’t know much about KarmaCorp or anything, and I think the grass and the trees and the flowers are making her nervous.”

  More sounds of sympathy from Iggy, along with some beautiful hand flourishes. “I get it. This place does feel kind of wild.”

  Raven looked up into the bubble-sustained atmosphere of Stardust Prime and around at the manicured meadow, confused. This was nothing like the jungle canopies and wild undergrowth of home.

  “We all come from something different.” Tee smiled, nestling her head on Iggy’s shoulder. “You grew up in an inner world, so I bet you’ve hardly seen a tree except for a tiny park you went to for special field trips.”

  Iggy grimaced and nodded. “Something like that.”

  Raven could see the lines of wisdom now. “And I’m from a wild world.” That wasn’t what the People called it, but she’d heard foreigners use the nickname often enough.

  “Right.” Tee circled her palms in a symmetrical encompassing of everything around her. “I’ve always lived with this, so it feels totally right and normal for me.”

  It was part of the peace in Tee’s spirit web—she was deeply connected to this place. But also in her web were the strands that said that someday the girl with the flowers drawn on her face would have to separate from what she knew and loved or her soul would be forever small. Her walk might look easier today, but it wouldn’t stay that way.

  None of them had easy walks. Raven looked over at Kish, still guarding her boulder. “Does anyone know what a mining world is like?”

  Iggy nodded slowly. “I have a cousin who did a rotation on one. He said it was just a big rock and black sky and lots of dark and mud and cold.”

  It was hard to imagine how spirits could grow in such a place. “Is that why she’s so angry? Because she’s never been warm or seen trees or anything?”

  “I don’t think so.” Tee shook her head, and her voice was back to sounding really grown up. “My dad says that even when a plant grows in hard dirt, it learns to be happy there, and anything else will feel difficult and strange.”

  It was more than that, and now that Raven was paying attention, she could see it as clearly as if Kish had a message tattooed on her forehead. “She didn’t want to come.”

  Iggy’s eyes opened wider. “But she’s going to be a KarmaCorp Fixer.”

  “You’re from an inner world. KarmaCorp is respected there.” Raven knew what it was to be from a world that didn’t revere anything from the outside—but like Iggy and Tee, she wanted to be here, had chosen to put her feet on this path, and had done it with the support and love of her entire family.

  Kish’s spirit web wasn’t just angry. It was torn. Uprooted. Raven didn’t have words for what she could see, but she could feel the bright, shining truth of it now that she was looking right. And she already knew that she wasn’t the best of them at working with wisdom lines. Carefully, mindful of Aurie’s words about how KarmaCorp did things differently, Raven balled up the end of the line she could see and tossed it to her new Dancer friend.

  Quick fingers caught it deftly. “Oh.” Iggy shaped the thread, did things with it that would have tangled Raven’s brain for ten cycles. “Oh. I can see.”

  “See what?” Tee practically shoved her head between Iggy’s dancing hands. “I don’t see anything.”

  Raven tried to remember what Aurie had said about Growers. Touch. They worked through touch. She reached forward and grabbed Tee’s hand, motioning for Iggy to do the same.

  Understanding lit between the three of them, hot and bright and good. It wasn’t the same as walking the webs with Grandmother and Aurie, but it wasn’t so very different, either. Raven’s heart rejoiced. She had made the right choice.

  Now they just had to help a friend make hers.

  Carefully, remembering that she worked with those not of the People, Raven pushed intention down both her hands. Iggy’s feet moved faster as the energy landed, and the light inside Tee glowed brighter.

  Shimmering with new understanding, the three of them shifted as a unit and went
to collect their friend. Kish might not know where she belonged yet—but they did.

  They were the four.

  A Child Is Born

  Bean walked into the podcare nursery, breathing out the annoyances of her day. Three trainee Fixers accidentally left behind on the strip at Vegas Station was a minor annoyance, nothing more. She’d dispatched a crew to pick them up, pronto—and sternly worded messages from Director Yesenia Mayes to everyone of any rank higher than a compost collector on Vegas.

  Standard assistant protocols, except for the part where Director Mayes had been unaccountably absent from her desk for the last three days.

  Now it was time to cuddle some babies.

  She’d been coming twice a week for over five years, and it still hadn’t gotten old, even if it had started kind of strangely. Just a short, handwritten note left on her desk one day, suggesting that the nursery could use some volunteers—the kind of note that had started Bean’s old greaser instincts humming almost six years after she’d laid them officially to rest. Yesenia didn’t handwrite notes, and she never told Bean what to do in her spare time, not without it having a greater purpose, anyhow.

  The note had also arrived just after Yesenia had come back from a visit to StarReader HQ, one that had left her wan and gray and closeted in her office far too often.

  Bean hadn’t asked. Most of the secrecy that shrouded KarmaCorp didn’t actually run all that deep—except for the layers that wrapped around Regalis Marsden and the tower where he sequestered the team of astrologers who watched over life, death, and everything in between.

  The StarReaders made the skin between Bean’s shoulder blades itch—but as Yesenia’s right hand, she also had a clearer view than most on just how much of the good in the galaxy traced back to Regalis Marsden’s tower.

  Bean hadn’t questioned the note. She’d come and cuddled a baby, and then another one, and now five years had passed and it had simply become part of her life.

  She stepped over to the bassinet in the far back corner. Toby was one of the quietest nursery pod residents, and as a result, she had a theory that he got less attention. In a year or two she was going to have to teach him a bit about being a squeaky wheel, but in the meantime, she could make sure he got a little extra cuddling when she was around.

  His eyes were awake and bright, watching the soft light show playing in the air in front of him. Bean toggled the switch to turn the lights off. “Hey, little guy. How about you come visit with me for a while and I tell you about my day, hmm?” She liked talking to the babies. They had such wise eyes.

  Snuggling Toby in the crook of her arm, she headed toward the old gel rocker in the small room connected to the space where the littlest nursery residents slept. They could talk in there without disturbing any of the other sleepers. One of the very first things Bean had learned was just how irate the podcare staff could become if you woke a sleeping baby.

  Something she understood far better after spending hours rocking one of them to sleep.

  Toby wasn’t going to be sleeping anytime soon, judging from the brightness of his eyes. She lowered into the squishy comfort of the gel rocker and settled the baby on her knees. His belly rumbled as he got situated, and she laughed. “Don’t you go pooping on me now.” The podcare staff were old school. No autodiapers, not on their turf. They went for the compostable ones, changed by human hands, and Bean had learned fast that podcare staff had a sixth sense about when to make themselves scarce.

  Toby stopped his wiggling and she breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you, sweetheart. It’s been kind of a rough day.” She really didn’t need a stinky diaper to top it off.

  Her captive audience blinked slowly.

  She grinned at him. “Not as rough as yours, huh? Well, I had to deal with three lost apprentices, a shipping screw-up that sent all our new skinsuits to the Althusia sector, and an irate chef who can’t figure out why he has to tolerate picky eaters in his cafeteria.”

  All while dealing with the quiet chaos of a boss who had vanished without a trace. Bean wasn’t worried, exactly—not quite yet. Sometimes KarmaCorp had business sensitive enough that even the Director didn’t know about it until she landed in it.

  All Bean knew was that she’d received the quiet, coded message from StarReader HQ that meant Yesenia was away on official duties and nobody was supposed to get themselves twisted up in a knot—or ideally even comment on the fact that she was gone.

  Bean snorted at Toby. “Like that’s going to happen.” Clearly, the StarReaders hadn’t ever met a planet of inquisitive ten-year-olds and the bigger people they turned into. There was nothing the gossip channels of Stardust Prime liked better than a vacuum.

  The Director had left her assistant a pretty mess to clean up. Bean sighed. Some things she couldn’t say out loud, even if Toby’s were probably the only ears awake enough to hear.

  So she’d pick something that wasn’t quite so classified to get off her chest. “I am kind of suspicious about those three trainees left on Vegas Station, I’ll have you know. Shuttle captains aren’t generally in the business of leaving passengers behind.” Especially three very attractive teens who belonged to KarmaCorp. “What do you think the chances are that Trainee Mendoza has been practicing her hacking skills again?”

  Toby blew some quiet spittle bubbles, as if considering just how easy it might be to delete three teenage names off a shuttle manifest.

  Bean felt inclined to agree with him. “I could put Elsie Firenze on the job.” The young Fixer was technologically adept enough to track whatever Addie Mendoza might have done, and enough of a troublemaker herself to put a good spin on it when she dumped the news into the Stardust Prime gossip chain.

  And if the trainees had a small scandal to keep themselves occupied, perhaps they might not notice the Director was missing.

  Bean raised her right eyebrow, tilted her head at wise-eyed Toby, and sighed.

  If Yesenia wasn’t back in twenty-four hours, her assistant was going to start raising quiet hell.

  Even if she had to shake the leg of Regalis Marsden himself.

  -o0o-

  Yesenia stumbled out of the shuttle into the private docking bay on Stardust Prime, black dots swirling in front of her eyes. She was so terribly weak. The birth had drained her, but hiding the birth from the questing, seeking threads of time had exhausted her even more.

  The threads had not understood that their exuberant joy was dangerous, that honoring the existence of new life put that new life and the entire fabric of the galaxy in deadly danger.

  Or the fabric of the galaxy far in the future, anyhow. She had gone back in time as far as she could possibly reach. There were good reasons most Travelers went crazy. The human brain wasn’t meant to dance across more than one timeline and make any sense of it.

  Yesenia leaned against a wall, trying to hold herself up. After all she’d been through, she simply wouldn’t permit her brain or her legs to give out on her. Not yet.

  Not until she knew her daughter was safe.

  Willing her legs to obedience, Yesenia pushed out with the last wisps of Talent she had left, reading the aura around the dirty, ill-wrapped bundle in her arms. Scanning, just as she had done relentlessly since the birth. Hoping she had enough Talent left to snip any threads trying to attach themselves. And felt the cell-deep relief at what she read.

  She had succeeded. Followed Regalis Marsden’s instructions to the letter.

  She had found the lacuna in time where a pregnancy and birth might be hidden, clipped the threads, rewoven energy and history in a way no Traveler would ever attempt before or again. A relationship entirely unwoven from the knowledge of time. A baby with fuzzy red hair and golden eyes, rendered as unimportant as her mother could make her.

  As far as the energies of the universe were concerned, this child was not hers.

  Now she had to do the part that was going to kill her.

  She had to keep it that way.

  -o0o-

  Bean
felt herself startle to alertness, woken from a very pleasant dream involving a sunny beach and a mindless novel, to stillness. To darkness. To the quiet comfort of the room that had been hers for eight years.

  Back on Gastonia, waking up sharply had been a way of life. Here, she had gotten lazy. Complacent. Safe.

  She strained her ears, trying to figure out what it was that had yanked her out of nocturnal bliss. A wandering trainee, perhaps, or someone’s Talent gone a little astray? Several of the new class of tadpoles were abundantly Talented, and the youngest sometimes had trouble keeping things tamped down as they slept.

  Even as she listened, she knew that wasn’t what had called her out of sleep. Those kinds of disturbances were commonplace. She woke for those too, but gently, with the calm alert of a den mother who knew one of her charges was awake.

  This was different. This had a knife edge, one that Gastonia’s best greaser, lately retired, recognized all too well.

  Whatever stalked in the dark, it carried danger with it.

  It called on Bean to shield. To protect.

  She swung out of bed, her feet brushing over the floor as she made her way in the dark to the small wardrobe. She contemplated a moment and ran her fingers over the neat line of hanging clothes. Normally she’d wander the halls in her colorful synth-silk robe and slippers, but this didn’t feel like something she wanted to meet in her pajamas.

  Going by feel, she pulled out the coveralls in textured, tough fabric that had once been her standard uniform. Cheap, standard-issue protection worn throughout the galaxy. As a greaser, she’d put hers through harder duty than most. These days, it mostly served as gardening gear when she spent a day hanging out with the Lightbody clan. She dragged it on over her light sleepwear and felt better. As Yesenia’s assistant, she generally saw it as her duty to wear things bright and flamboyant. It calmed those who needed a gentle distraction, amused those who knew her boss well, and disarmed a whole lot of people foolish enough to underestimate a woman in a colorful headscarf—or the woman who had hired her.