Page 3 of Spark Transform

“Charrascos!” His shout echoed in the empty, ruined station. “Come out, and I’ll make it quick. If I have to come after you, I’ll skin you alive.”

Arco knew he was baiting her, but she couldn’t stay silent. She subvocalized and sent it to the few larger cameras that had speakers. Her words seemed to whisper from every corner of the room.

“Your thigh is bleeding out from your femoral artery. And sit on that forceblade and spin.”

His expression hardened. “You first.”

Some of her cameras reported high winds, and she realized he was using his talent against them. She quickly ordered them all to find solid surfaces and stay still. Even a top-level teke should have trouble finding the tiny stationary objects in a room full of debris. Nonetheless, Jaffasso managed to smash a few on the rubble-strewn floor.

An emergency medical siren sounded in the distance and grew louder. Jaffasso hesitated a moment, then dropped the forceblade and holstered his stunner. He pushed himself up onto his good knee, yelling as he forced his bloody leg under him. His jaw tightened as he pulled himself upright.

In the holo, a segment of pipe with a jagged end rose out of a debris pile and flew into his hand. He used it as a cane as he hobbled toward the gaping hole in the wall. Strobing shadows across his ashen face highlighted the grim determination there.

The decision on whether or not to try to delay him was taken out of Arco’s hands when his improvised cane slipped on the rain-slick floor. His wounded leg collapsed under him. He thrust his hands out, but couldn’t prevent his head from landing hard on a sharp plascrete shard. The rest of his body stilled, like he was sleeping with the cracked pedestal as his blood-coated pillow.

She directed the cameras to Marcan’s unmoving form. They detected shallow breathing, but the unnatural angle of the woman’s head meant the impact had compromised her neck.

Arco wished bravery were in her skillset. She took two slow, deep breaths and steeled herself to get up out of the filthy, wet trough. Just as soon as she stopped trembling.

A harshly bright floodlight swept into the station, accompanied by an amplified voice. “Police! Nobody move!”

Luck had brought her one of the better Ridderth patrols. The usual practice was to shoot first and stonewall any questions later.

Tears stung her aching eyes. Who was she that made others sacrifice so much for her?

She closed her eyes tightly, pretending for a moment that she wouldn’t see the blood and deaths for the rest of her life, but of course, she would. Her minder talent for remembering everything guaranteed it.

After a long moment, she started to order her cameras to return, then thought better of it and left them where they were, recording everything and auto-sending it to her data vault. No sense trusting she’d also lucked into the few Ridderth law enforcement officers who didn’t hate journalists or weren’t on someone else’s payroll.

Chapter 2

Planet: Mabingion • GDAT 3242.187

The gravel-voiced, gray-skinned officer with the fashionable blood-red predator eyes shoved a display across the battered interrogation room table toward Arco. “Sign your statement. Then you can go.” The officer’s glare probably intimidated people who weren’t as wrung out as Arco.

Wamduea, one of Novo Granica Media’s lawyers, intercepted the display and scooped it off the table to read. His welcome presence was one of the benefits of her contract with Novo G.

Acrid cleaning chemicals and stale sweat vied for the title of most objectionable smell in the stuffy blue room. Arco had already awarded her chair the prize for least comfortable. The clock display in the room lied, so she surreptitiously glanced at the display on Wamduea’s necklace-style percomp. Dawn would be breaking in thirty-five minutes.

Ringo and Jaffasso were dead. Marcan’s biometal-reinforced spine — a legacy of her days as a gunnin in the CGC Air Div military service — had saved her life, but she’d need weeks of reintegration therapy once the medics regenerated the nerves in her neck.

Wamduea handed the display to Arco and gave her the barest of nods. She confirmed that the digital transcript matched her memory of what she’d said, then signed it with two biometrics and put the display on the table.

She’d already provided raw segments from her camera recordings to the police analysts. They might get around to reviewing them sometime this decade.

Too many in the Ridderth Police privately considered assassinations of journalists to be a community service. If they’d known she was also a minder, even just a filer, they’d have detained her for a week on general suspicion. If they thought she was a member of a criminal crew, or from the slums known as the Canals, they’d probably have charged her with littering the station with the dead and sent her to work on the garbage landfill moon while awaiting trial. Justice in Ridderth had many variations.

Arco and Wamduea stood and walked to the door. When it didn’t open, Arco turned and raised an eyebrow at both Wamduea and the officer.

Wamduea’s lips thinned as he turned the full force of his quelling stare on the woman. The officer gave them both an insolent smile, clearly enjoying the moment, then slowly keyed a sequence on her police gauntlet. The door slid open.

Arco inventoried her belongings at the intake desk, relieved to find that only a couple of low-value cashflow chips had gone missing. Her surviving flying cameras were all accounted for, probably because she’d told the clerk the cameras were designed to record thefts and send the holo to the planet-wide public net.

She and Wamduea took a lift up and waited silently in the rooftop lobby until the Novo G flitter landed on the airpad and pinged with the prearranged code. Walking fast through the drizzle, they splashed through the small lake on the roof and climbed into the back of the flitter.

Arco nodded to the pilot and was surprised to see Devanesh, Novo G’s security chief, sitting in the back. Devanesh’s smooth, dark skin and customary black clothing made her look like a specter in the dim light of the flitter’s cabin.

Arco dropped her backpack at her feet and webbed herself into the padded seat as Wamduea did the same. Somehow, he still looked as if he’d just stepped out of a high-end body parlor, even after hours of riding herd on surly, overreaching police. He’d stopped them from illegally using a telepath to interrogate her, and enforced it using his own minder talent for shielding both himself and her.