Jumper's Hope: Central Galactic Concordance Book 4

by Carol Van Natta

  Tuzan blinked. “You want to kidnap Davidro or one of his staff?”

  “No, I think Davidro dangled a payment-on-delivery contract for whoever could produce Kerzanna or me. That way, he only pays for results. It was just luck that the CPS sifter saw us first.” Jess had another thought. “If the contract is still open, I can use it to get me inside Davidro’s base.”

  “Bad, bad idea.” Tuzan crossed his arms. “Ridderth’s crews are an order of magnitude more dangerous than when you were here last. They’ll kill you just to see the funny look on your face.” Tuzan frowned. “But I can see you’re going to do it anyway.”

  “She’d do the same for me.”

  Tuzan snorted. “Of course she would. She’s a Jumper.” He turned to one of his displays. “I’ll get you a list.”

  Jess nearly jumped out of his skin when one of his queries finally popped on the identity of the medevac capsule that had taken Kerzanna. He’d spent the last two hours preparing to fall into the lap of one of the less violent crews, and using Jess-the-bomber’s expertise to develop multiple contingencies to get him out of trouble. Between the surprising array of weapons that had been in Kerzanna’s bag that she’d left in Tuzan’s borrowed delivery ground hauler, and his own collection, he had a veritable untraceable arsenal. A brief trip to a local body parlor—owned by one of Tuzan’s myriad customers—gave him the hair, eyes, and lighter skin tone that Davidro would remember. Jess completed the image by buying a farmer-style brown coat, pants, and boots. A rented airspeeder with a few premium features sat waiting on the clinic’s rooftop airpad.

  He quickly crafted a half dozen queries to track the capsule’s location all the previous day. Whoever directed the capsule smartly had it changing ID numbers between each of the Ridderth traffic system’s tracking nodes, but hadn’t bothered to change the speed, elevation, and size designation. Tracing its path on the holomap, Jess imagined a scenario where the sifter’s accomplice sent the capsule into a holding pattern circling the city until he collected the reward from Davidro, then sent it straight to the rented ground-level warehouse eighteen hours ago. He had to get there now.

  He hurriedly closed down the big comp and strapped the largest percomp on his arm. He grabbed his coat and bag on his way to Tuzan’s office. “I think I know where Davidro has Kerzanna, and I’m going in.” He handed the man the other percomp. “Source logic for the identity insertion code drifts. Consider it a donation to the cause.”

  Tuzan stuffed the percomp in his pocket, then hugged Jess tight. “You’re totally fractured, you know. Good luck. Ping me when–” Tuzan suddenly arched back and screamed, his face a rictus of pain. “Majiril! No!”

  He staggered sideways, then took off running out of the office and toward the clinic entrance.

  Jess followed. “What’s happening?”

  “My sister!” Tuzan snarled. “Someone’s killing my sister!” He frantically pounded on the emergency exit bar until the door opened, then launched himself outside and toward the small groundcar he’d left up the road. Jess grabbed the man’s coat and boots and ran out into the rain after him. He caught up to Tuzan just in time to support his elbow and save him from falling.

  “Where is she?” asked Jess.

  “At home. Golewoma District,” Tuzan sobbed, fumbling at the groundcar’s door lock. “She’s in so much pain.”

  Jess knew it was easily an hour away by ground, and Tuzan’s hysteria made him worthless to drive.

  Sending an anguished, fervent prayer to Kerzanna’s gods of chaos to protect her for a while longer, Jess pulled Tuzan away from the groundcar and back toward the clinic.

  “We’ll take my airspeeder.”

  CHAPTER 25

  * Planet: Mabingion * GDAT: 3242.023 *

  JESS HAD PICKED an airspeeder because they weren’t required to use the Ridderth traffic control system, and therefore harder to trace. No autopilot meant he couldn’t divert any attention to his passenger, or they’d be a splat on the front grill of anything bigger, which was everything else that flew. He pushed the speeder to its limit and got to the modest eight-story apartment building in the Golewoma district in thirteen minutes. A meter above the airpad, Tuzan scrambled out and tore into the entryway that led to the building lifts. Jess bounced the airspeeder and landed off the airpad in some gravel. He locked it and ran to the entryway himself, only to discover Tuzan must have taken the stairs.

  Jess had to waste precious time cracking the security pad so the building would let him into the stairway. He wasted more precious time running through the halls of the top floor because he didn’t know the apartment designator. He slowed when he finally saw an open doorway at the end of one cul-de-sac hallway and approached it cautiously, listening intently.

  When he peeked once around the doorway, he saw Tuzan on his hands and knees near a woman lying on the carpeted floor. Something brushed against his tight mental shields, but he ignored it. When he peeked again, Tuzan was lying next to the woman, his arm across her stomach.

  Jess pulled a shockstick from his left large coat pocket and cautiously entered the room. “Tuz–”

  Movement to his right startled him into stepping left and raising the shockstick.

  An older, sad-faced, gray-haired man wearing gray held his hands up. “Please don’t hurt me. I’ll give you anything you want. I didn’t see anything. I’m just visiting.”

  Guessing the man to be one of the shadow railway’s “guests,” Jess started to turn back to Tuzan, when his mental shields were slammed by what felt like a pressure vice. Instinctively, he switched the shockstick to his right hand and thrust it into the man’s chest, shoving him backward. The man cried out and the pressure in Jess’s head lessened. Jess spun and took two long steps to swing a fist at the man’s unprotected jaw. The man fell, and the pressure vanished. Jess shocked him again to make sure he stayed down, then turned to Tuzan and his sister.

  Tuzan’s face was wet with tears as he groggily raised himself to his hands and knees. The painfully thin, ghostly pale Chinese woman who looked nothing like Tuzan appeared to be unconscious, and a pool of blood saturated the carpet under her head of very short black hair. The front of the woman’s patterned pink blouse was torn open.

  Anger rose in Jess like a runaway maglev train. He dropped the shockstick to pull the phaseknife out of his pocket. He flicked it on as he stalked toward the man who had tried to rape a defenseless woman who’d trusted him.

  The man on the floor must have recognized Jess’s intent. “It was an accident! She tripped, and I tried to save her, and she hit her head on the table!” It had a ring of truth.

  Jess slowed, but allowed some of Jess-the-bomber’s ruthlessness into his expression. “Talk fast or die.”

  “I know who you are, Mr. Orowitz. What you are.” The man smartly stayed on his back, with his hands still and visible. “Dixon Davidro sent me to hunt you down, but he wanted information on the minder escape ring, probably to make his boss want to keep him instead of deep spacing him for screwing up the Charisma project.”

  “Why did you hurt the woman?”

  “I didn’t mean to. Davidro uses me for interrogations because I’m a sifter and a telepath. I thought I had her well controlled, but she fooled me and got a message out to her brother, then tried to compel me.” He shook his head, shame and guilt plain to read. “I panicked and pushed her away. She tripped backward. I grabbed onto her blouse to save her, but it tore and she fell.” He briefly pointed toward the table.

  “Why didn’t you run?”

  “I couldn’t. Even though she was hurt, she froze me, compelled me to stop using my talent. Contained me.” Consternation flitted across his face. “Sort of like a shielder, but more. Anyway, she finally passed out, and then your friend came barreling in. He didn’t even see me sitting there. He’s got shields like yours, but he was distracted, so I got through them to subdue him. Then you came, and you weren’t distracted.”

  As far as Jess could tell, the man had told th
e truth. “Can you fix T… my friend? Revive him?”

  “Yes, but I need to touch him. I’m nearly burned out.” Again, it seemed like the truth, but if the man was a sifter, maybe he could fool other sifters into believing he spoke the truth.

  After a long moment, Jess took a deep breath and let it out. “If you hurt him, I’ll kill you instantly.”

  “I know,” the gray man said quietly. “I’m Zerrell, by the way.” He sat up slowly, then equally slowly, scooted closer to Tuzan’s foot. He reached out slender fingers and put them on the exposed skin above Tuzan’s boot.

  Jess thought he felt something flare, but it could just be his imagination. Within a minute, Jess could already see improvements in Tuzan’s alertness.

  “Why do you work for Davidro?” asked Jess.

  “Because he’ll destroy me and my family if I don’t.” Zerrell’s frown deepened. “I was Minder Corps. Listed as a commerce auditor in the official records, but it was really a covert interrogation unit. After I retired, I made a deal with an ex-Minder Corps healer, and we helped each other get off the addictive enhancement drugs and start a therapy practice for traumatized children. I married into a blended group, but I didn’t tell them what I had really done for a living—they’d never have accepted me out of fear that I’d betray several of their very talented kids who had deliberately failed their CPS testing.” Zerrell shook his head, looking defeated. “Davidro found me somehow and threatened to tell them, and the parents of my patients, if I didn’t do occasional assignments for him. When he pings, I tell everyone I got invited to a conference.”

  Jess-the-medic pushed at Jess to get medical treatment for Tuzan’s sister immediately, but Jess would have to leave before they got there. “Have you seen Kerzanna Nevarr?”

  “No. Davidro had his telepath call me home last night, but by the time I got there, he’d already interrogated her and got nothing. She really got under his skin, so he sent Renner to dispose of her. Renner reported that Nevarr was dead, but he was lying. I think he helped her.”

  Jess remembered Renner as a violent man with a volcanic temper, and loyal to Davidro. “Why would he do that?”

  Zerrell shook his head. “I can’t even guess. I think I’ve underestimated him for years.” He pointed to a chair with a questioning look, and Jess nodded. Zerrell carefully slid into it.

  “Look,” he said, glancing to Tuzan and back to Jess, “you’re probably considering killing me, or detaining me for a while, which is as good as killing me and my family, so I have an offer for you. I can permanently disable the failsafe shutdown in your Kameleon bioware. I’ll leave here and go straight to my family, tell them the truth so they can protect themselves, and then I’ll disappear.”

  Jess wanted to pretend ignorance, but mindful of the futility of lying to a sifter, he opted for keeping a blank look on his face. He needn’t have bothered.

  “I know exactly what you are, maybe even better than you do. The first five years of my service, I worked in the Kameleon program. I picked up all sorts of things I wasn’t supposed to know about the bioware. I can disable the other default warning and control routines, too, if you still have them. When I was there, it was policy for the out-processing staff to ‘accidentally’ leave them active, in case Kams went rogue. I doubt it’s changed.”

  Disagreeing overlays squabbled in his head, but he ignored them all. “Sorry, I can’t trust you.”

  “Yes,” came a high, breathy voice behind him, “you can.” Tuzan’s sister was awake.

  Tuzan sat cross-legged by her side and held her hand. His face was still wet with tears as he tore his eyes away from her and looked up at Jess. “Majiril is never wrong about the people she deep reads.”

  “Trust your talent, Jess,” she said, holding his gaze. In her eyes, he saw the resemblance to Tuzan. “Feel it in Zerrell. Feel it in me. No haze. No static.”

  Her words explained some of what he’d been feeling. Jess-the-medic pushed harder at him. “You need immediate emergency treatment.”

  “No, it’s far too late.” She squeezed Tuzan’s hand until he looked at her again. “One last gift, Gēgē. Let me die.”

  Tuzan moaned softly and shook his head violently. Tears poured from his eyes.

  Her voice sounded threadier. “I’m a burned out husk of what I was. My talents are gone. I don’t sleep and I can’t taste anything. The shadows... I hurt all the time. No healer can fix that, not even Ayorinn himself. I love you for sacrificing your happiness for mine, but I’m a danger to… All of you need to live... help those I can’t...” She took a slow, rattling breath. Her eyes drifted. “The conflagration… is…”

  Tuzan cradled her hand against his chest.

  Jess felt her die.

  Zerrell looked as anguished as Tuzan.

  Jess took a deep breath then knelt in front of Zerrell. “Fix me.” He pushed up his sleeve and offered his bare arm. “Fix me so I can go find Kerzanna. Then find your family and run.”

  CHAPTER 26

  * Planet: Mabingion * GDAT: 3242.024 *

  THE NOONDAY SUN cast weak shadows through the perpetual haze that hung over Ridderth. The rare clear day had people out in droves, pretending they lived in a sunny climate where they didn’t have to carry powered umbrellas or wear hoods. Renner pulled his dark scarf up to his chin and ducked his head as he leaned against the wall, waiting for the laughing group of people to pass. His quarry was more than just in the middle of them, she was the center of attention.

  He loitered like a tourist in the crowded media business district in Ridderth because something Georgie said had caused Dixon to pull Renner from the priority search for Orowitz and send him after the blue-eyed, red-haired journalist named Charrascos. She’d published a short teaser story with more innuendo than fact about the Charisma project, but Georgie said it was Dixon’s doom. Dixon wanted her dead, but quietly and discreetly, which meant he couldn’t kill a whole crowd just to kill her.

  Renner had occasionally wondered what it would be like to die, and unfortunately, he had a feeling he was soon going to find out. Dixon was losing control of everything. Zerrell had come back to base because of Xan’s message, and Dixon had sent him back to the fugitive minder ring instead of keeping him to be ready to interrogate Orowitz. He hadn’t asked for details on Nevarr, for once simply taking Renner’s word that she was dead. Dixon hadn’t yet connected the news story about the capture and arraignment of the two notorious crew, nicknamed “the Gravediggers,” who’d been discovered unconscious in a distribution center. Vahan secretly sent her credentials out, looking for another job, not realizing that Dixon would never let her go. Dixon forgot and gave Sachin an extra dose of helio counteragent, and forgot to loosen Renner’s collar until Lamis reminded him. Georgie looked like death warmed over and talked about fire and ash.

  If Dixon self-destructed, Renner would be dead within days. Quicker, if he had the courage to trigger one of his collar’s several failsafes, instead of waiting for it to slowly strangle him to death. His long-game plan to escape had been more of an idle fantasy. What he’d really wanted was to go down in a blaze of glory that took out Dixon and as much of the CPS as he could with the afterburn.

  He knew from his hasty research that the well-traveled and prolific Charrascos was actually in her late thirties, but in person, she looked closer to twenty. The vids he’d seen of her didn’t tell him she was so short, or that everything and everyone interested her. In her three forays out of the Novo Granica Media building, each time for food, she’d never been alone.

  The only time he’d been able to get within three meters of her had been in a restaurant that morning, when she and a group of her chattering coworkers at the news magazine with waited for a table. He’d snaked out a tendril of his talent to get a feel for and memorize her unique energy signature, so he could track her later from a greater distance. Unexpectedly, she’d seen him looking at her, and instead of turning away, she’d smiled wide as if she recognized him as an old friend. It froze
him on the spot. The moment passed when someone else demanded her attention, and he’d quickly moved away and pulled up his hood. He was used to being feared, or as unnoticed as a piece of furniture, so her focused interest had been disturbing.

  Now he followed the laughing group to the Novo Granica offices and watched them go inside. He’d already cased the building for other entrances, but found none, and the rooftop airpad was several stories up and well secured. Journalists had learned the hard way over the years that in Ridderth, extra security saved lives, usually their own. He hadn’t had time to figure out where she was sleeping.

  He found a public comm center with private booths and used the disposable percomp Dixon had made him take. He used CPS security protocol to ping Lamis for instructions. Dixon came online instead.

  “Did you take care of the problem yet?” Even in the poor-quality holo display, the man looked harried.

  “No, it’s too crowded. How much latitude do I have?”

  “No headlines,” snapped Dixon, “or we may as well launch ourselves into the sun right now. Why are you pinging?”

  The man really was going downhill. “It’s thirteen hundred. Check-in time.” If the collar wasn’t loosened by that evening, the blood would be noticeable.

  The reminder seemed to focus Dixon’s attention. “Stay on Charrascos four more hours, then come home.” For a moment the old Dixon was back. “We’ll regroup at eighteen hundred and…” He shook his head. “Be home by eighteen hundred.” The connection went black.

  Renner was at a loss. He unexpectedly had the freedom to choose how he wanted to die, and he couldn’t decide on quick or slow. This must be how captive-bred animals felt when kept in a pasture the day before slaughter. He shook his head, then shook himself again, hard. He wasn’t usually the macabre type. Georgie’s downward spiral had infected Dixon, who was now affecting Renner. He resolutely marched back to the Novo Granica Media building to watch for Charrascos and do his fucking job.