Pico's Crush

by Carol Van Natta

  “Two days ago, he told you he was going to the body shop and got ‘stuck in traffic.’ Instead, he went to the floater war and killed at least eleven mercenaries and crew. Then he went to the body shop, where he paid them extremely well with his own funds to secretly treat him for a burned hand, broken bones, and crush injuries.”

  Dixon crossed his arms. “Perhaps he went after the independent investigators.”

  “Assuming the ‘investigators’ aren’t just a cover for him wanting to kill again, you told him to keep them busy, and no more deaths.” Renner twitched an eyebrow. “Have you looked at your Davydov lately?”

  Dixon looked at him expectantly. “What will I find when I do?”

  “Fried. Not by me.” Whoever had done it had less finesse than he did, but he had no equal, as far as he knew.

  “Wounds can’t be traced to a specific energy weapon.” Dixon’s tone was mild, but his fingers twitched, a subtle sign that he was irritated.

  Renner allowed himself the hint of a smile. “Five-prong burn marks can.”

  “Mr. Radomir’s homemade stunner?”

  “This afternoon’s local newstrends have a story of two accident victims and a mutilated college girl with the exact same upper-spine burn marks.” His throat was burning from so much talking, but it was worth it.

  Dixon frowned. “What college girl?” His fingers began curling as if they wanted to be fists.

  Renner bared his teeth in a caricature of a smile. “The girl he attacked hours after the crew leader job, in the same building. He made her bleed. You’d recognize the pattern.”

  Dixon was silent for a long moment. Renner was afraid he’d have to spell it out for him, but as careless as the man was with details, he wasn’t stupid.

  Dixon took a breath in slowly, then blew it out fast. “It would be inconvenient if the various police departments compared notes on sanctioned accidents and the reward outings. I think we need another reinforcement session with Mr. Radomir. We’ll have to train him to use different techniques, and supervise him more closely. And perhaps look for the investigators. They might be the source of our newstrend trouble.”

  Renner went for the prize. “Will you have time to do that again, and work with the new subject? Can you trust Radomir?” He knew Dixon was banking on the success of the project to get promoted, and relied on his staff for daily supervision to keep the subject in line. Radomir could do considerable damage to Dixon’s plans, if he was feeling desperate or vindictive.

  Dixon launched himself from his chair to stalk to the windows. “I dislike greedy people, always wanting more.” He turned to glare at Renner. “I protect you all, and give you what you need. You’ll have to take on enforcement duties again. Where am I going to get another shielder?”

  Renner kept his mouth shut and met Dixon’s gaze with his usual glower. Renner had done Dixon’s wet-work on and off for years, so it was nothing new. Dixon always had ways to collect new pets, as all his independent contractors could attest.

  “Bah,” said Dixon in disgust. He turned back toward the windows. “Mr. Radomir has outlived his usefulness.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yes, yes,” growled Dixon, flapping his hand in dismissal. “You know what to do with the remains. Oh, and send Lamis in. I need her to arrange travel. I’ve found the perfect location for our special project.”

  As Renner walked down the hall toward Radomir’s suite, he opened a gate to his anger and let it build. His talent worked without it, but his perpetual rage needed the outlet. He used to think that’s all he was, a murderous rage generator, until Dixon’s oldest pet had healed him and taught him friendship.

  When Radomir had hurt Neirra, she’d extracted promises from Renner not to tell Dixon, and not to sign his own death warrant by going after Radomir. Neirra’s steady decline had given Renner daily motivation to catch Radomir’s mistakes and give him pain, as a cover for his true goal of getting Dixon to order Radomir’s destruction. It was the first long-term plan Renner had ever come up with. He owed Neirra sanity, friendship, and comfort. He couldn’t give her any of those, but he could give her the gift of retribution. She’d done her own damage to the warped twist, making him depend on the drugs daily, for life, but the ultimate revenge would now be Renner’s. Power crackled along his skin.

  Neirra had taught him the value of having something to look forward to, something to live for. He decided his new plan would be to find a way to thank her before she died, and tell her about Radomir. After that, he’d start on the most dangerous plan of all, figuring out how to get free. It would probably kill him, but it would be a hell of a ride.

  ###

  ABOUT THIS BOOK

  Thank you for reading Pico's Crush. I hope you had as much fun reading it as I had writing it. By the way, if you haven't already read them, Overload Flux (Book 1) introduces Luka, Mairwen, and the Central Galactic Concordance universe, and Minder Rising (Book 2) introduces Lièrén Sòng, his wife Imara, and delves into the Citizen Protection Service. The short novella, Zero Flux (Book 2.5) returns to Luka and Mairwen for an adventure and mystery.

  If you’re enjoying the series, please post a review of this book and the others at your favorite ebook retailer. Even if it’s short and sweet, it really helps. Reviews are what get books noticed and read by others. Think of it as paying forward for the last time someone recommended a book you really liked.

  For news of upcoming releases, and to find out what’s next in the Central Galactic Concordance series, please sign up for my newsletter at http://bit.ly/CVN-news. I promise not to send photos of my cats or vacations (unless it’s somewhere off-planet).

  I’d love to know what you think about the story and what you’d like to see in the future books. You can visit my website and blog at the cleverly named Author.CarolVanNatta.com and drop me a line, or connect with me on Facebook at CarolVanNattaAuthor.

  I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Mirek, who helped make Jerzi's and Pico's Polish excellent, and to Jaime, who helped make Andra's Spanish shine. Thanks to my beta readers, Jill, T3, Melisse, Merry, Roger, and Ann, who kindly pointed out myriad ways to improve, well, everything. I am also grateful for the professional editing services provided by Shelley Holloway of Holloway House, and the stunning cover design by Gene Mollica Studio.

  In case you want to know something about me... I share my home in Fort Collins, Colorado with a sometime-mad scientist and various cats. Any violations of the laws of physics in my books are the fault of the cats, not the mad scientist.

  BOOKS BY CAROL VAN NATTA

  Space Opera

  Overload Flux (CGC, Book 1)

  Minder Rising (CGC, Book 2)

  Zero Flux (CGC, Book 2.5)

  Pico's Crush (CGC, Book 3)

  Jumper's Hope (CGC, Book 4)

  Fantasy

  In Graves Below (Magic, NM) - paranormal romance

  Retro Science Fiction Comedy

  Hooray for Holopticon (coauthor)

  EXCERPT FROM JUMPER'S HOPE

  * * * * *

  DESCRIPTION

  Reunited lovers must outwit a ruthless government agent, or their rumored deaths will be real this time.

  Two retired elite special forces veterans discover their battles aren't behind them after all. Someone considers them loose ends, and will stop at nothing to erase their knowledge of a secret government project. Their service left them both with wounds that will never heal. Do they still have what it takes to survive?

  Kerzanna Nevarr's elite special forces days of wearing Jumper mech suits and piloting Citizen Protection Services' ships are long gone. The dark legacy of her service forced her to learn to live a quiet life. And she had to do so alone, without the lover who died before her eyes.

  Jess Orowitz, veteran of CPS's secret spy organization, Kameleon Corps, made the mistake of trusting his superiors. He's paid a horrific price—fractured memories, constant headaches, and the death of the only woman he ever loved. Retirement on a quiet farming planet
has kept him in an emotional deep freeze, but safe.

  But now, Kerzanna is being hunted for reasons she can’t guess, and even more stunning, the man who helps her escape is Jess, her supposedly dead lover. For Jess, discovering Kerzanna is still alive is only the first of the lies and betrayal he uncovers.

  Worst of all, their hunter is someone with CPS intel and lethal resources. Someone who believes the only obstacles standing in the way of success are one broken-down ex-Jumper and a fractured Kameleon.

  Together, are they strong enough to escape death one more time?

  * * * * *

  CHAPTER 1 * Planet: Branimir * GDAT 3242.002 *

  It took Jess Orowitz a lot longer than it should have to realize the injured pilot he and his neighbor pulled from the flitter wreckage was a dead woman.

  She groaned as they set her down as gently as they could on the glascrete surface of the public flitter port’s landing pad in front of an older, gaunt man who was slowly opening his large medic kit.

  Jess’s farming neighbor, Bhalodia, the man who had called Jess to the scene, stood and moved back, rocking side to side on antsy feet. He’d dressed up in his only white tunic to come to town, and now it was ruined by a smear of bright red airfoil lubricant on his sleeve.

  “She one lucky pilot.” His English was more pidgin than Standard, but he got by similarly in at least twenty other languages besides his native Thai. He pointed a thumb over his shoulder toward the hot, still-sparking remains. “Broke flitters usually tumble, not slide.”

  Jess knew it had been the pilot’s skill that avoided the buildings when landing what was left of her ruined flitter, but he was too stunned to speak. Kerzanna Nevarr, the only woman he’d ever loved, the woman who’d been killed four years ago in a full-city riot on a distant planet, was alive. He stayed on his knees and had to remind himself to breathe.

  Considering the Central Galactic Concordance had more than five hundred settled planets across the galaxy, hundreds of thousands of cities, and hundreds of billions of people, the chances of the two of them reconnecting again in a tiny town in farm country on a back-of-beyond planet were impossibly remote.

  And yet here she was.

  Her tangled dark blonde hair was much longer and curlier than he remembered, and partially covered the decorative Jumper tattoos on the side of her neck that led to the skulljack interface just behind her ear. Her nose looked straighter, and the thin scar that had bisected her right eyebrow was gone. He wondered if her eyes were still as blue as the summer sky. Cosmetics made it easy to change eye color on a whim, but Kerzanna had never paid much attention to fashion. Under the bloody, torn casual pants and loose jacket and top she wore, all shades of brown and cream, she was still tall and looked well muscled. Maybe she’d been one of the lucky Jumper veterans to escape the long-term side effects of the mech implants and enhancements.

  “Pssst!” Bhalodia hissed quietly in Jess’s ear, startling him. “Told you. Pitt chemmed again.” Bhalodia tilted his head toward to the medic.

  Pitt looked like he was performing a slow-motion dance interpretation of a medic assessing a patient, but unfortunately, it was real. Kwiksloe addicts thought their consciousness was expanding at half the speed of light, but it was just an illusion brought on by a depressed nervous system. It was why Bhalodia, who’d known Jess was still in town for a meeting, had pinged him to come to the crash site and prevent an unnecessary death because of Pitt’s impairment. Jess could be a medic when needed, though he paid a price for it.

  Markalan Crossing’s town constable, Castro, walked around the corner of the main hangar building, then broke into a trot the moment she saw them. She was mostly good at her job, unless it had anything to do with her lover, Pitt. Bhalodia muttered disgustedly as he turned away from Jess and toward the flitter wreck. Bhalodia had served eighty-two years in the Central Galactic Concordance Military Ground and Air Divisions before retiring to his sprawling family farm on Branimir, and had zero tolerance for the situation with Castro and Pitt.

  Castro’s habitual frown deepened as she took in the status of the flitter and the pilot, then became deeply pained as she realized Pitt’s condition. She gave Jess a warning look as she put her hand on Pitt’s shoulder and waited for him to notice and look at her. “Sweetie, I ordered a medevac. Maybe you should wait and let Orowitz and Bhalodia take her to the clinic.”

  Jess struggled to stay still during the ten long seconds it took Pitt to process her words and respond. “I’m-m-m-m… g-o-o-o-d…” He gave her a slow, sunny smile that said she was his entire universe.

  Castro visibly melted and smiled tenderly back, even though she undoubtedly knew the kwiksloe gave him tunnel focus. “All right, sweetie. I trust you.” She stepped back and glared at Jess, daring him to say one word. Her hand strayed as if by accident toward the needler on her quick-release belt. Something about her said she was microseconds away from unloading a full clip into anyone who interfered with Pitt.

  Kerzanna needed immediate, competent assessment, and Pitt was useless. Jess sat back on his heels and dropped his gaze so Castro wouldn’t see any changes in his expression when he reached for the part of his mind that was Jess-the-medic and let it take over. The familiar sharp pain became a familiar dull headache as he let his professional gaze catalog Kerzanna’s injuries. He ignored the superficial cuts and contusions and focused on the probable head injury and possible cracked sternum. Her wheezy breathing suggested lung impairment, likely from smoke inhalation or possibly from an intruding broken rib or crash debris. Jess-the-medic’s hands twitched when Pitt carelessly thumbed her swollen cheekbone and drew a grunt from her. The idiot was wasting time with a manual assessment instead of using a scanner.

  Jess-the-medic wished he was a minder healer, able to help Kerzanna with just his mental talent, or at least a telepath, so he could tell Pitt what to focus on first, but he was just an ordinary man. Or as ordinary as he could be after the Citizen Protection Service’s secret Kameleon Corps program left a few extra people in his head. He would diagnose his mind as fractured, except he was one of the fractures.

  The medic kit probably contained inhib in its pharma supplies, but even if Castro would let Jess administer an emergency dose to Pitt, it’d take fifteen or twenty minutes for him to gain even minimal coherence. Kerzanna’s pallor suggested shock, and despite what Jess-the-man thought, it was obvious to Jess-the-medic from the subtle degradation of muscle mass and the mechanical stiffness of her joints that Kerzanna suffered from Stage 3 of Pelker Thomré Vadembo Syndrome, colloquially known as waster’s disease. On average, Jumpers with eighteen years of service and six years into retirement were in Stage 4, so she was better off than most. Jumpers were supposed to only get treatment at CPS clinics, but all competent medics knew the basics, despite the CPS declaring it to be classified data and blocking commercial publication of any information on it.

  Pitt had apparently noticed the shock, because he pulled out the standard oxy-stim jet from his kit and pressed the activator. Jess-the-man clasped his hands together to stop his medic self from touching Pitt and getting a chest full of needles from Castro. “Don’t give her that. It could kill her.”

  Jess-the-medic’s authoritative tone got Pitt’s attention. His hand stopped centimeters away from her unprotected neck, puzzlement slowly blooming in his expression. Jess gave him a hard look. “She’s an ex-Jumper. Probably has PTVS.” Because Castro was still standing there instead of examining the downed flitter like she should have been, he added, “Waster’s. The adrenal compound in the oxy-stim could stun her nervous system, make her forget how to breathe.”

  Castro narrowed her eyes. “How do you know?” She stabbed a pointing finger at Kerzanna. “Do you know her?”

  Jess-the-medic tilted his chin toward Kerzanna’s head. “Jumper tattoos, old style. Hair is too long for regulation. She wasn’t jacked in when we pulled her out of the flitter, so she’s decommed. Retired.” His professional history, if Castro cared to check, showed he’d
been in the Citizen Protection Service as a base quartermaster and emergency responder for thirty years. In most cases, it accounted for any unusual knowledge he had, including medical protocol for a member of the CPS’s elite division of special forces. His personal history was none of Castro’s business.

  Castro’s left wrist gauntlet lit up, and she subvocalized a response. “Medevac capsule’s here.” She turned to the north and cupped her hand over her eyes to shade them from the noonday sun. “We’re lucky to get it. A mine accident has most of them tied up.”

  While they’d been talking, Pitt’s face had slowly become a study in despair, perhaps because he’d recognized the serious mistake he’d been about to make. He looked slowly at Castro, his lip trembling and his eyes brimming with unshed tears, then at the jet in his hand. With an unexpected burst of speed, he plunged it down onto his thigh and gave himself a full dose.

  “Merde!” growled Jess, too late.

  “Billy!” yelled Castro. Jess-the-medic grabbed the jet as Castro dove to catch Pitt as he toppled sideways. He was already starting to twitch. Without treatment, it would soon escalate to a full-blown, lethal seizure. Oxy-stim was even worse for kwiksloe addicts than it was for Jumpers with waster’s. Jess-the-medic dropped the jet and leaned across Kerzanna’s legs to paw through the disorganized medic kit, looking for a stim counter-agent.

  The automated medevac capsule descended to the landing pad. Bhalodia stalked toward it, silently sneering at Castro as she cried, cradling Pitt’s head and shoulders in her lap. “Billy, baby, what were you thinking?”

  Jess found a sedative jet and adjusted it for a child’s dose, enough to blunt the stim. Too much, and Pitt would crash. He punched the jet into Pitt’s thigh, next to the first injection site.

  “What was that?” growled Castro, trying to pull Pitt’s shuddering form away.