The taller man shoved his companion toward the north along the path. “Kratíste to rolói,” he snarled, ordering the other man to keep watch.
The taller man’s intention became obvious when he pulled out a phase knife and slit the woman’s pants, while undoing the waistband of his own. Some rockbrains, usually men, were so fucking predictable.
Andra pulled out and aimed both her flechette guns, then shot the shorter man in the back of his neck and kidney and the taller man twice in the throat before either one knew what was happening. They crumpled in boneless heaps of dying flesh and pouring blood. The merc woman was on her own for now.
Andra reloaded her guns, then went back to the Materials Science building’s east entrance. She watched a flitter leave the Chem building and cross overhead. The arc of the flight said it was landing on the Math building’s airpad.
More than ever, she needed information. And a platoon or two of gunnin, while she was asking the universe for favors.
Chapter 19
* Planet: Nila Marbela * GDAT 3241.149 *
Some days, Luka could be patient, but not today. He’d arrived on the campus floater forty-five minutes ago, with Mairwen landing their flitter on the Materials Science airpad. They had compromised on her desire to be nearby when Luka met with the man called Lièrén Sòng, and Luka’s desire for her to be safely far away. He would walk to the Math building, and she would keep watch from the top of the Materials Science building. Sojaire had already asked to go to Pico Adams’s rocket demonstration for her class, so it was a thin but plausible cover story.
Though they’d agreed to meet at twelve-fifteen, Luka wanted Sòng to be early, so he could listen to what the man had to say, use his “essence” talent on him, because that’s what Zheer had really been asking, then leave.
Precisely at the appointed time, the temporary construction door chimed. Luka verified the man standing outside looked like the image he’d been sent, then opened the door. He was relieved that the man seemed older and more relaxed in person; his official photo made him look like a priggish twenty-year-old.
Luka stepped back to allow the man to enter. He was shorter than Luka by six or eight centimeters and wore nondescript brown pants and a tan shirt. Once over the threshold, he bowed. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me, Investigator Foxe.” His Standard English was impeccable, but there was a Mandarin cadence to his speech.
“Please, call me Luka.” He closed the door behind them, then waved toward the two borrowed office chairs and a crate for a table with cups of water. “It’s the best I can do for amenities, I’m afraid.”
Sòng looked around with interest as they walked. “I’ve not had the opportunity to visit many police investigation sites.”
Once they were seated, each carefully, as if the chairs were untrustworthy, Luka’s impatience got the best of him. “I’ll be honest. I’m here primarily because someone I respect asked me to meet you.”
Sòng nodded solemnly. “I appreciate your honesty, and your forbearance. I asked people I respect to help arrange this, because I owe you a debt.”
Luka raised an eyebrow. “Are you here in your capacity as the Citizen Protection Service diplomatic liaison to Abasarran, or as the Sòng Family Trust representative?”
Sòng smiled slightly. “My fame precedes me, as does yours.” Luka took that to be an admission that he’d done research on Luka, too. He imagined the CPS had access to a lot of records. “The debt, however, is my own. My actions in the past caused you and many others harm, and I am doing my best to atone. In your case, the harm was nearly fatal, so my debt is considerable and must be personal.”
Despite his best intentions to remain detached, Luka was intrigued. “The only time I was nearly killed was by that helvítis raggeit pedophile in the joyhouse kitchen. I know everyone who was in that kitchen, and you weren’t there…” Intuition sparked bright and hot. “But you were when he escaped CPS custody in the first place. Or perhaps should have been?”
Sòng blinked, then smiled ruefully. “Your fame is deserved.”
Not, Luka noted, a denial.
Luka usually went kilometers out of his way to avoid remembering the Collector case, where a pair of depraved pedophiles had converted an interstellar ship into a corrupt, grisly playroom, and stacked the bodies of dead children in the ship’s subzero hold like winter cordwood. The case had obsessed him, and sent his hidden minder talents out of control. It was his most dangerous set of talent-driven memories, etched in horror and blood and the restless ghosts of dozens of doomed children. He felt his body temperature start to leach away.
Desperately, he focused on running, the memory of running with Mairwen that morning, the impact of the pavement, the heave of his lungs, the rhythm of Mairwen’s breath, the trickle of sweat on his skin. His unruly talent-driven memory slowly subsided. He had no idea how long he’d been in his struggle. “Sorry,” he said, and attempted a smile. “I get distracted sometimes.”
Sòng looked surprised. “Are you a minder?”
Luka smiled with practiced ease and shook his head. “No, not according to both rounds of CPS testing.” He’d often been accused of it in his career, but usually for his intuition, not for the real talents. His talents were benign to everyone but himself, but even ordinary minder talents were suspect, and his were unique.
“So your records say.” He crossed his legs. “Mine say I am a sifter and a twister, and do not say I am also a telepath.”
Luka felt his eyebrows raise at the careful statement. He recollected that sifters could detect truth and lies, and could feel when another minder’s talent energized. Sòng’s combination of talents would make for one hell of an interrogator. Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. “That sensational book from three years ago was right. That pedophile didn’t escape, the CPS let him go.”
Sòng shook his head. “Funds had been changing hands in a certain unit for years, to influence favorable outcomes. The employees were acting for themselves, not the organization.”
“The corrupt trade office, you mean.” The scandal that only one person—Sòng—came away from unscathed, if Sojaire’s research was right.
Sòng met Luka’s gaze squarely. “Newstrends are so unreliable.”
Luka had to admire a man who could lie with the truth, or in this case, tell the truth with a lie. “So you weren’t involved in the, uhm, extracurricular activities, but feel guilty you didn’t know about them.” Luka crossed his arms and shook his head. “You don’t owe me anything. I was just doing my job.”
“I do owe you, because I wasn’t doing mine.” He planted his feet and put his hands on his thighs. “My parents sent me to the CPS Academy when I was twelve, and to the CPS Minder Institute after that. It was a safe place for minders like me, given that I had enough raw talent that I could hurt someone badly if I didn’t learn to control it. The most important tenet of their instruction was that we bear as much responsibility for our inaction as for our action.” He frowned. “Once, the CPS was doing the right things for the Central Galactic Concordance, both minders and non-minders alike. Even if they’ve lost sight of it, the mission still needs doing.”
Luka kept a rein on his temper. “I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on that. I doubt I’ll ever have a lot of respect for the CPS. You probably already know my mother washed out of the Minder Corps because the enhancement drugs were killing her.” He tilted his head a little, wondering what Sòng’s opinion was. “Does everyone have to take them?”
An unintelligible expression flitted across Sòng’s face before he smoothed it away. “They’re mostly used for telepath or telekinetic talents. Patterners don’t seem to benefit from them.” He took a drink of water and held onto the glass. “The CPS contracts with pharmas to develop new drugs and dispensaries to tailor them. It can be difficult to find the right formulation.”
Luka nodded, remembering the various combinations they’d tried on his mother, some worse than others. Sòng probably had
similar experiences, considering his talent mix.
Right as he was about to ask Sòng another question, his percomp tingled against his skin, signaling an incoming ping from Mairwen. A moment later, a synth voice repeated the message in his earwire. “Bad air traffic coming.” He loved the woman, but she conserved words like they were an endangered species, and it made her communications particularly cryptic.
“Problem?” asked Sòng.
“Just a traffic alert.” But a good reminder that he needed to move the meeting along. If he was going to use his “essence” talent on Sòng, he needed the man relaxed and not paying attention. Luka smiled. “So what does a diplomatic liaison do on a frontier planet?”
“I represent the CPS, and make its services available to the government and individuals. I supervise four minder clinics, which we’ve combined with local medical clinics, and in one case, with a body shop. I also coordinate CPS cooperation in emergency response.” Though his tone was quiet, a thread of pride ran through it.
“No minder testing?” Luka reached for his water glass, as a cover for snaking out a tendril of his talent toward the man in front of him. Luka didn’t practice with it as often as he should, but regular use had helped tame it.
He smiled. “No, and no Jumpers, either.” He’d apparently fielded the question often. “The CPS is a guest on Abasarran, and the government hasn’t expressed an interest in hosting a testing center or a Jumper base. Individuals may request testing through my office, and we arrange free interstellar transit to the nearest testing center.”
Luka was ambivalent about minder testing. It helped kids with measurable talents to know that they weren’t going crazy, but it also stigmatized them. “Is that why you’re here on Nila Marbela?” He extended another tendril.
“No, my wife and I were traveling on family business. My contact said you would be here, and I took a chance that you would be willing to meet. Officially, I’m taking my desert-planet bride for a brief vacation on a water-planet paradise.” Sòng frowned and set down his water. “Please stop what you’re doing.”
Luka froze his talent and assumed an expression of puzzlement. “What am I doing?”
“Activating another minder talent you don’t have. The first one was some variant of patterner, but this one is on the edge of telepathy, and yet not. You’re very subtle.”
Luka took a chance he’d never contemplated, and trusted a man from the CPS. “You’re the first person who’s ever noticed. I meant no harm.”
“I’m a top-level sifter with a lot of training, or I might not have noticed, either.” Sòng was silent a moment. “It feels like a unique. What does your talent do?”
“It gives me a holistic impression of who someone is, their essence. I’ve only ever told a few people about it, because only my telepath mother believed me. If I tried to claim either of my talents now, thousands of criminal cases I worked on would be called into question.” Luka twirled his water glass in his hand. “After the Collector case, both my talents went wild, and were eating away at my sanity, until I met someone who could help me find a way to control them.” Luka shook his head. “I got lucky.”
“Trauma and minder talents can be a difficult combination. After I nearly died in an accident, it took months working with another minder for me to recover, and you didn’t even have that advantage.” He picked up his water glass again. “Does your essence talent work on everyone?”
“Almost.” It was a novel experience, being able to discuss his talent openly, and with someone who understood. “I don’t get much from top-level shielders, and nothing from the one or two non-minder natural shielders I’ve met. I think I tried it on a Kameleon once.” He barely suppressed a shudder. “It wasn’t pleasant.”
Sòng nodded sympathetically. “I can’t say that I’ve ever worked with them.”
Which Luka took to mean that since the CPS had never publicly acknowledged the Kameleon program, Sòng wasn’t allowed to, either. The CPS was monstrously big, and doubtless had three times more secret programs than public ones.
“I’ve never met a twister before,” Luka said. “I know cleaners erase memories, and they’re gone for good.”
“Twisters can’t erase them, but we can change them, and leave no trace. If the twister is good enough, the real memory can be left intact, leaving two versions of the truth.” He smiled crookedly. “Most people think we’re dangerous.”
Because Luka had hidden his talents, he’d never had bigotry directed at him, but he’d seen it everywhere, once he’d left his home on the comparatively tolerant planet of Lumi Silta. “In my experience, angry, jealous, greedy, or scared people are the most dangerous, and they use the tools they have.”
Sòng sipped his water. “Please forgive me if I am too blunt, but I believe you would not have used your talent on me if you hadn’t been asked to do so by the person you trusted to arrange this meeting.”
Luka felt his eyes widen. “Yes,” he conceded. “It feels… unfair.”
“Then I think you should do as you’ve been asked. The person I trusted to arrange my introduction to you specifically said I should be ‘open to new experiences.’”
Luka’s intuition sparked. “To forecasters, the rest of us are all n-dimensional chess pieces.”
Sòng looked startled, then amused. “Indeed.” He finished his water and placed the glass on the makeshift table. “What will make your task easier?”
Luka had only had one fully cooperative target before. Usually they were distracted or busy. “Tell me about life on a frontier planet.”
As Sòng described a continent with a forest so vast, the locals were still finding new resources to catalog, and of the growing town where his wife was the new manager of infrastructure, Luka opened his talent and let the tangle of impressions come. A strong sense of ethics, and a respect for tradition… deeply held love intertwined with unworthiness… a deep and abiding anger at betrayal of him and the people he loved… twinges of loneliness and fear of rejection… a reverence of peace and justice.
Luka allowed his tendrils to withdraw, one by one, until his talent was quiet once more.
Sòng was looking at him expectantly. Luka hastily replayed the man’s question in his head, about whether he’d been to Spires, the Central Galactic Concordance’s gleaming showcase of a capital city. “Yes, I have to go in person every year to renew my High Court certification.”
“I can recommend a hotel and bar, the next time you’re there. You stayed there once, during the Collector case trial.” A smile played about Sòng’s lips. “My wife was a bartender at the time and remembers you.”
Luka shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I met so many people then, and my memory from that time is poor.” He’d been hounded like a nova-class star by the press at the time, and he’d hated it.
“I, too, have a poor memory of certain things.” The statement seemed to amuse Sòng. “So, did you learn what you needed from me? If I hadn’t known what to watch for, I wouldn’t have felt it. It’s like a phantom breeze.”
Luka nodded. “I would hire you for any position of trust. I’m guessing that’s what our respective chess masters want to know.”
“Very likely.” Sòng snorted. “I hope I have a few more years of unworthiness before being singled out for such an honor.”
Luka chuckled. “I sync that.” He felt some of his tension draining away, and had an idea. “I’m working on a case right now that you might be able to help me with, if you’re willing. That can fulfill the favor you think you owe me.”
Sòng shook his head regretfully. “I’m afraid I know nothing about forensic investigation.”
“No, but I’m betting you know more than most about what pharmas and the CPS do for each other.”
* * * * *
Lièrén made a deprecating gesture. “Of course, he also believes aliens from the Andromeda galaxy walk among us and meddle in our politics.”
Luka laughed, as Lièrén had intended. He genuinely liked th
e older man, which was an unexpected bonus. When Luka was reserved, he was sharp, but when he was relaxed, and allowing his intellect free rein, he was a force to be reckoned with.
“Your great-grandfather sounds like he’s, uhm, interesting to live with.”
“Yes. Luckily, Abasarran doesn’t yet have the civilized amenities he prefers.” Sòng Tiān Cì’s only visit in the last two years had delighted his wife Imara and her son, but had given Lièrén a sudden desire for strong drink.
A subtle flash from Luka’s hand caught his eye. “I appreciate your courtesy, but I don’t mind if you respond to the ping that came in earlier.”
“Ping?” Luka activated the elegant wearable percomp on the back of his hand that had been subtly blinking. “I didn’t even notice.” He tapped his earwire, looking sheepish. “My partner will be unhappy…” He trailed off as he listened, worry spreading across his expressive face. He tapped his earwire again, then his percomp. “I’m not getting any signal.”
Lièrén frowned and activated his own very powerful wristcomp. “Nor am I.” That was unusual. Very little could stop CPS communications.
“My partner’s message said five mercenary gunships landed on the Chemistry building’s airpad. One of them shot at something in the Chemistry building. She wanted us to leave.” His lips thinned with tension. “That was thirty-five minutes ago, and now we don’t have comms.”
Luka stood, and Lièrén stood with him. Luka sketched a bow. “It’s been a delight, Mr. Sòng, and I hope we can meet again, but I have to get to Mairwen.” He smiled briefly through his worry. “She thinks I’m a magnet for trouble.”
Lièrén followed Luka as he walked quickly toward the door and entered the code to unseal it. “Can you find your own way up?”
“Yes, of course.” Lièrén had been using his talents to check for people approaching the construction area since he arrived, but now he extended his talents as far as they would go. He’d been training his top-level sifter talent to detect synaptic signatures from increasing distances. “There’s an activated ramper coming up… the lifts, I think, not the stairs. Only one other person is on the floor at the moment. A shielder, maybe, moving fast.” He pointed toward the front of the building, where the stairs and lifts let passengers out into a widened balcony that joined both wings. “That way.”
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