Minder Rising: Central Galactic Concordance Book 2

by Carol Van Natta

  She gasped. “Three days? What were your parents thinking?” She instantly looked regretful. “Sorry, that was rude.”

  The outside door behind the booth side where Imara and Derrit were sitting opened. Lièrén’s sifter talent was suddenly overwhelmed by a shockwave of violence from the tall man who’d entered. The characteristic rising shriek of a beamfire weapon assaulted his ears.

  “Down!” he hissed, throwing himself sideways and sliding under the table. He pulled Derrit’s ankles down and shoved his smaller body against the wall. Imara was already rolling under the table with them when the room reverberated with a hail of projectile impacts. Did the man have two weapons?

  “Motherfucking CPS!” shouted the man. The continuous waves of violent haze felt like howling wind as Lièrén struggled to control his sifter sense. The acrid smell of beamfire residue made his nose sting, meaning the shooter had a combo-gun. He pulled Imara up against Derrit and huddled over them as best he could. He heard hot debris rain down on the table above them. He felt Derrit’s shielder talent expand to his mother, and hers, though weaker, did the same for her son. For a half second, their familiar synaptic harmonies touched him at the deepest level, and he wanted to be a part of it. The shooter’s yowl of rage shattered the moment.

  “You want a riot? I’ll give you twisted fucks a riot!” The combo-gun spat again and people screamed. Lièrén tried to focus his sifter talent on the shooter, like he’d done with the street thief, but the man was too far away. He whipped his talent back quickly when he realized the shooter was a strong telepath and maybe a ramper.

  “You tell the CPS they reap what they sow!” The man opened the door, fired one more burst that shattered and burned the glass above the bar, and ran out into the rainy night. Silence prevailed for a few heartbeats, and then something in the back crashed. Voices began to rise.

  Imara tried to shift under him, but he kept her immobile until his sifter talent confirmed that no one else was broadcasting violence. He retracted his sifter talent as he eased his body back enough to let her move. She partially turned to him and gave him a questioning look.

  “It’s clear now,” said Lièrén.

  “Rayle?”

  “Near the storeroom, I think.” He’d felt Rayle’s unique synaptic signature and the flare of empath talent at the edge of his sifter range. He indicated Derrit with a quick warning flick of his eyes. “People were hurt.”

  Concern and determination warred in her expression. “I have to help.”

  “I’ll stay with him.” He crawled out onto the floor, then turned to help Imara slide out.

  When her body was only centimeters from his, she paused, her breath warm against his cheek. “What should I tell the police about you?”

  Her unexpected protectiveness made him want to close the distance between them and just hold her, but it wasn’t the right time or place. “Tell them what you know,” he whispered. She only knew his official cover story of being a functionary in a CPS trade office.

  She nodded and rose to her feet. Voices were clamoring, accompanied by wailing from the back corner of the bar.

  Lièrén, still crouched, held out his hand to Derrit. After a long moment, the boy crawled out. In the light, it became apparent that he had a bloody nose.

  Lièrén stood and grabbed a recyclable napkin from the table. “Please accept my apologies for injuring you.” He watched to see if Derrit needed help standing, but he had no trouble.

  Derrit rolled the napkin into a fat tube and stuffed it up his right nostril. “It’s okay. I’ve had worse. It’s easy to fix.” He was starting to look around, and Lièrén moved to block his view of the back. Young boys didn’t need visions of blood to fuel their nightmares.

  “We may as well sit here for a while.” He indicated the booth bench facing away from the trouble area. “We can’t go anywhere until the police release us.”

  Derrit sat and slid back toward the wall. “What happened?”

  Lièrén grabbed a cloth napkin from the nearby large table and sat next to Derrit. He dipped the napkin in his abandoned glass of water and began carefully wiping the blood from Derrit’s face. “You haven’t had good luck with your nose lately.”

  Derrit snorted, and a little blood splattered out of his left nostril. His chin was also scraped.

  “I’ll get you an ice pack. Stay still so you don’t bleed so much.”

  Lièrén surveyed the situation as he made his way carefully toward the bar. The decorative glowlights had shattered, leaving halos of glass on the floor. A crooked burn traced up the walls and onto the ceiling to his left. Rayle was comforting a woman and her daughter, his empathic talent burning bright. Imara emerged from the hallway with the first-aid kit and placed it on the edge of the bar where it met the wall.

  “Cold packs?” he asked her.

  “Under the sink to the right. Bring them all out.”

  He shut down all his talents and steeled himself to turn right to go around the end of the bar. It was worse than he’d imagined. The shooter had been close, and the burn was wide. It curved from the ceiling and dipped to table level in the back two booths. Three people were dead, burned beyond recognition, and another was badly injured. Someone huddled under the table where Derrit sometimes did his schoolwork. The two men in the large booth closest to the door had escaped with only minor injuries from burning fragments blown out by the beamfire.

  He spun quickly to a crouch when he heard running feet from the wide lobby entrance behind him. He stood again when he saw it was the hotel’s security staff, the same pair who’d handled the chemmed telepath a couple of weeks ago.

  The slender, black-skinned man took charge as the short, stocky woman crossed to the street entrance where the shooter had been.

  “I’m Security Okonjo, and that’s Security Poltorak.” He spoke loudly enough for everyone to hear, and made eye contact with several of the patrons. “The police are on their way. The first two medevacs are two minutes out, and our on-call healers and medics will be here any time. Who’s not a hotel guest?”

  One woman raised her hand, and Okonjo started toward her. Lièrén picked his way through the debris around the end of the bar and stopped near the figure under the table. A black-haired teenage girl was rocking herself, and her plain face was distorted in anguish and wet with tears. He energized his sifter talent and was buffeted by waves of synaptic distress pouring off her. He crouched, so as not to crowd her, and slowly extended his hand to her.

  She looked at his hand, then met his eyes. “He burned them,” she whispered in Chinese-accented English. He noted a flare of healer talent and realized she’d not only seen the deaths, she’d felt them in her mind.

  “What’s your name?” he asked softly. He repeated it in Mandarin.

  “Sh-sh-sh… Shiàlìng Leung Lǎo.” She was shaking like an exosphere re-entry capsule.

  “Shiàlìng, ràng wǒ lái bāng nǐ. Let me help you.” He infused as much warmth into his tone as he could and moved his hand closer to where one of hers was tightly gripping her knees. She put her trembling hand in his, and he energized his sifter talent to help her brain deal with the flood of conflicting responses to her traumatic experience. Although he wasn’t trained, he’d learned some of the technique from his own therapist.

  He gentled her transmitters as he helped her to first kneel, then stand, keeping contact with her hand the whole time. He blocked her view of the corner as he took her around the bar and straight to the booth where Derrit sat.

  “Xiàlìng, this is Derrit. He’s a shielder. I’m going to ask him to help you contain your healer talent until you can control it yourself, all right?”

  Derrit’s eyes grew round, then he nodded determinedly. He was very much his mother’s son.

  “Hi, Xiàlìng,” he said, moving his legs so she could sit next to him. Lièrén nudged the girl’s dopamine levels as he helped her sit. It would take a little while for the adrenalin to flush out of her system. Derrit’s shielder talen
t energized, and the girl visibly relaxed.

  Lièrén caught Derrit’s eye and gave him a respectful nod of thanks, then turned to go back for the ice packs and see where he was needed next.

  CHAPTER 15

  * Planet: Concordance Prime * GDAT 3238.219 *

  “All right, listen up, people. Any filers in here, raise your hands.”

  Imara sighed and raised her hand. In the larger booth near the entry, an older man wearing exercise gear did the same.

  The police had arrived in force thirty minutes ago. Guns were strictly controlled in Spires, and whoever had shot up the bar had carried a damn big one. One officer each guarded the three exits, another two were setting up forensic equipment to survey the damage, and three had commandeered the only undamaged corner and brought over a table and chairs. Commander Arfan, the man yelling at them like they were road-crew noobs, was of indeterminate heritage, and his English had a slight Arabic accent.

  Imara was glad that Lièrén had already identified himself as being in the CPS Minder Corps and provided the name of a Spires police detective he’d worked with. With luck, neither the obnoxious Arfan nor the much nicer Detective Hǎinán would ask her about him.

  Arfan glared at everyone in the room. “I’m taking statements from the filers first, so the rest of you will know not to lie about anything.”

  She barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes. People disliked minders enough already. If he was worried about lying, he should have brought in a sifter. She glanced to where Lièrén sat at the end of the bar, then looked away. He had done as much as Rayle in calming people down. An empath and a sifter made a good team.

  After the medevac autocabs had come and gone with the three bodies and the severely injured, and the emergency healers had treated the remaining bar patrons, Arfan had separated everyone and ordered them not to talk to one another. He’d made a grudging exception to let Derrit and Shiàlìng stay together in the booth, if only to keep the girl from sobbing uncontrollably. Two of the dead had been her parents.

  Imara approved of Lièrén asking Derrit to help the girl, and she knew Lièrén had done something to help her, as well. At her suggestion, Lièrén had quietly asked one of the medics to send an advocate and a trauma specialist for Shiàlìng as soon as possible.

  “You, tender, behind the bar,” Arfan barked, and rudely pointed at her with a stabbing finger. “Come with me.” He pointed to the corner table.

  “Sorry, I have to stay here.” She tilted her chin toward what was left of the dispensary door. Beamfire had sheared off the top right corner, and the door was hanging precariously by one deformed hinge. She’d already cleaned up the spills as best she could. She’d have to do a detailed inventory later. It would be safer to replace everything, but the hotel might not want to pay for it.

  Arfan glared at her. “The server can watch it.” He jabbed a thumb toward Rayle, seated at the middle of the bar, a couple of chairs away from Lièrén.

  Rayle, acting relaxed and bored, though she knew he wasn’t, shook his head. “Can’t. I’m not licensed.”

  “Your pardon, Commander,” said Lièrén, his head respectfully lowered, “but perhaps you might direct Bartender Sesay to protect the chems and alterants, so no one can get warped or fluxed before their testimony is recorded.”

  That possibility apparently hadn’t occurred to Arfan, and it clearly annoyed him even more than being defied. Imara had been privately gratified to note that Lièrén’s polite deference in the face of Arfan’s bad manners had even caused his coworkers to help rein him in.

  “Stay,” Arfan ordered, as if she were a trained dog. He motioned to the other filer and pointed to the corner, where Detective Hǎinán was, then followed.

  Imara mouthed a soundless “thank you” to Lièrén, then leaned against the counter again.

  About ten minutes later, the police set up the recording equipment so Imara could stay near the dispensary. She told them everything she’d seen and heard, including the exact words the shooter had yelled. They didn’t ask how it was she was already under the table by the time the first shots were fired, and she didn’t volunteer it. She owed Lièrén a great deal for protecting Derrit first.

  Since they were there, and Lièrén was seated at the end of the bar, they recorded his statement next. He led the police to infer that it had been the noise, not his minder talent, that had first alerted him to trouble.

  As they were moving the equipment back to the corner for the rest of the interviews, Detective Hǎinán turned back. “Where will you be if we have more questions?”

  “Regrettably, I am unable to say. I am moving to a new duty station in a day or two, but I don’t know where yet.” He fished his percomp out of his pocket. “I can provide a universal ping ref.”

  A sharp stab of deep dismay took her by surprise. She tightened her arms around her ribs and made hidden fists to keep anything from showing on her face. It was her own damned fault. She’d reminded herself over and over that he was a transient, and to keep her distance, but obviously, it hadn’t stopped her foolish heart from hoping. Derrit wasn’t going to take the news well, either.

  Rayle turned to look at her. His expression softened in sympathy momentarily before he smoothed it back to boredom and swiveled his chair away. She needed to do a better job of keeping herself contained, if only so she wouldn’t drag her empathic friend into her personal drama. She tried to imagine walls of one-way glass around her mind, like the Spires roadways, letting out only what light she chose. She thought she felt something, but for all she knew, it was an incipient tension headache.

  Two hours later, the police finally left, and Imara found herself in the bar with Rayle, Derrit, and Lièrén who had insisted on staying to help clean up when the restaurant staff had categorically refused.

  Shiàlìng, the traumatized girl who’d seen her parents murdered, was claimed by her older brother, who’d been in his room at the time of the shooting. He’d whisked her away to meet with the advocate and therapist, much to Commander Arfan’s disgruntlement. Imara doubted even a skilled interviewer, which Arfan certainly was not, would get anything useful out of Shiàlìng for a while.

  The bar was closed for now, but the hotel manager had already arranged for an overnight temporary restoration, with the ambitious goal of being open again by tomorrow night. To her surprise, he’d authorized the emergency purchase of a whole new dispensary and supplies, and sent the hotel’s maintenance crew to secure the damaged dispenser until it could be properly recycled. Maybe the Quark and Quasar really was the hotel’s cashflow magic, like Rayle kept telling her.

  Derrit was subdued, in part because of the aftereffects of his healed bloody nose, and in part because Lièrén had told Derrit he was shipping out, and this was his last night. When Derrit asked if he was coming back, Lièrén said he didn’t know, but Imara privately thought it was a snowball’s chance in hell. She couldn’t fault Lièrén for anything—he hadn’t once hinted he would stay, or even wanted to—but she could fault the universe for unfairness.

  Even now, the universe taunted her as they all worked together efficiently and easily, like a family. Not that Rayle didn’t have family of his own, but she’d met a couple of them and wasn’t surprised Rayle had run away as fast as he could. Caring, mischievous, empathic artists didn’t thrive in the hushed, hallowed halls of high finance. Her own family was far away, and determinedly content to scrape out a living from a dry planet. She knew Lièrén had family, too, but what kind of parents abandoned their child to a school for years?

  The shooting and its aftermath had made her emotional, wanting to cling to the people she liked and loved. That was why she’d accepted Lièrén’s help instead of shooing him out like she should have, especially when she’d had to explain to him what a pry bar looked like. She mentally shook herself to get her head back in the game. She could cry later, in the shower, after Derrit was asleep. She pulled another reclamation container off the stack and activated it so it would stan
d on its own, then marked it for petro-plastics. Rayle and Lièrén were prying what was left of the broken travel poster off the wall after a jagged edge had caught Derrit’s hair twice.

  “Hey, Imara,” said Rayle. “Maybe this time they’ll install the poster so it’s straight.”

  She smiled. He’d been valiantly trying to cheer them all up. “I’ll add it to the repair list so they do.”

  Derrit paused the cleaning robot so he could replace its collector, which had filled up quickly with splinters of wood from the back booth. “Agent Sòng, looks like you’ll need a new favorite booth when you come back. This one’s slagged to zero.”

  Imara ruthlessly cut off any thoughts of what would have happened if Lièrén and Derrit had been there as usual. Dwelling on might-have-beens was a quick trip to hysteria. She focused on sorting the undamaged bottles into an even display, knowing she’d have to do it again tomorrow night if the promised re-supply came in on time.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lièrén stiffen, as if he was just now realizing how lucky he’d been that night. She watched as his eyes traced the burn pattern that started high, dipped into the last two booths, then rose again. His fingers tightened to a death grip on the handle of the pry bar. Rayle suddenly staggered back a step, and a sudden white-hot wave of fear and guilt blew past her. She flinched, then re-imagined her glass walls, which seemed to help. This time, she didn’t discount what she’d felt… what her talent felt. Lièrén looked down, and visibly forced himself to relax.

  He drew a breath to speak, hesitated, then let it out slowly as he looked to the ceiling. “I am not at my best this evening. Please forgive me.” He looked to her, then back to Rayle.

  “You can’t blame yourself.” Rayle stepped in closer, a compassionate look on his face. “Whatever it is you just thought of, you can’t have known this would happen.”

  Lièrén shook his head and looked at Derrit, then at Imara. The raw distress on his face made her heart ache. “I should have.”

  “No,” she told him firmly. “You saved us. Not even Ayorinn himself could have predicted this.”