Page 74 of Spark Transform

“I’m told you have shields,” Gezi mused, her tone dangerously soft, “but you’re not a shielder. What are you?”

Arco’s patience, already stretched paper-thin by exhaustion and adrenaline, began to fray. “On a schedule. Where is Brenner?”

Gezi raised a beautifully sculpted eyebrow. “Perhaps a sample of your goods first.”

Arco took a breath and delivered the first piece of the puzzle. “Orkutta Bryt. Telekinetic. Institute-trained. Has an expensive bodyshop habit. Experienced with explosives. Where is Mr. Brenner?”

The blue-haired sifter to Wutala’s left tapped her gauntlet-style percomp, her eyes losing focus as she subvocalized into her own comms. The room held its breath. After a long, agonizing moment, the sifter gave Gezi a sharp nod.

Wutala’s eyelid twitched — a microscopic break in her composure that Arco almost missed. Wutala turned to her crew. “Open the package.”

The blue-haired sifter and the hooded telepath crossed to a large, rectangular crate sitting near the office door. They released the seals, lifting off the solid lid and dropping the side gate of what appeared to be a high-end cryo-container used to transport prize bovines.

They hauled Brenner out. Arco’s heart lodged in her throat. He blinked rapidly, his eyes unfocused and rolling. His head lolled to the side, and a thick string of drool slipped from the corner of his slack mouth. If the sifter and the telepath weren’t actively holding him up by his armpits, he would have face-planted onto the dirty glascrete floor.

Arco dug her nails into her palms to keep her professional mask from shattering. Seeing the fiercely competent man reduced to a helpless ragdoll sparked a vicious anger she had to ruthlessly suppress. “What’s wrong with him?”

Gezi glanced at the sifter, who answered with clinical detachment. “Temporary control measures. He’ll be fine in a few hours.”

“Our deal,” Arco said, her voice dropping to a frigid register, “was for Mr. Brenner undamaged.”

Before Gezi could reply, a blinding flash of light erupted outside the glascrete wall, followed instantly by a muffled boom that rattled Arco’s teeth. The floor beneath their boots trembled as a violent shockwave washed over the dock.

Everyone looked toward the reinforced glass. A spaceship had crashed on the adjacent pad, triggering a chain of secondary explosions. Plumes of fire roared upward, impossibly bright and hot enough to defy the driving snow, sending a rain of flaming debris scattering across the tarmac and bouncing against the glascrete sliding doors.

No one spoke as the conflagration raged. Only Brenner remained oblivious, his chin resting on his chest as if he’d simply dozed off on his feet. A minute later, from the pad directly beside the wreckage, a red-and-yellow starship suddenly ignited its main thrusters. It launched in a brutal, vertical tear without waiting to clear its connections, ripping gantries and fueling cables loose to flap wildly in the howling winter winds.

Wutala let out a low whistle, genuine admiration coloring her tone. “That pilot is warped beyond all recognition. Find out who they are, and tell them I’m hiring.”

Arco stared at the blazing exhaust trail disappearing into the storm clouds, doing her absolute best to hide the sickening plunge of her stomach. She was pretty damn sure that her ride off Mabingion had just left without them.

Renner’s talent was slowly crawling back online, like a gathering of static instead of a steady draw of power. It was distant and wispy, but it was there. The two Wutala crew members hauling him upright expected him to be a brain-wiped invalid, so he happily played the part. Channeling his memories of the pinzai addicts who haunted the alleys near Kooga’s soup kitchen, he let his eyes roll, blinked out of rhythm, and allowed his knees to wobble like they weren’t speaking to him. Considering how wrung out he felt, it wasn’t much of a stretch. He took petty, secret delight in letting a thick string of drool slide onto the blue-haired sifter’s coat sleeve. He wasn’t firing on all jets, not by a long shot, but he’d give them a fight if they wanted to start something.

Beneath the slack-jawed facade, Renner was being buffeted by waves of emotion. Anger burned at being a pawn again, especially the sifter woman currently gripping his biceps. Chest-warming relief that his red angel had actually come for him. Cold terror when he looked at Minan, Tōn Ko, and Nilsson flanking Arco, realizing they could all die because of him. For the first time, he understood Arco’s crushing guilt over people who got hurt and died for her. She was risking everything, giving up her own escape, just for him. Rage that once again, others controlled his destiny. Stupid fucking universe.

The tall, gray-clad telepath leaned in and whispered something into Gezi Wutala’s ear.

Wutala’s lips curved into a sly smile as she spoke to Arco. “You might like to know that the spaceport is in lockdown and is now refusing all launch requests.”

Renner let his head loll toward the glascrete wall, staring blearily at the stubbornly blazing remnants of the spaceship crash outside and the blizzard’s violent efforts to smother it. None of this was good. But when he forced his gaze back to Arco, she simply nodded, seemingly unsurprised. Minan had probably fed her the intel through her earwire, or clever Arco had already deduced it herself.

Arco’s gaze darted from the empty cryo-capsule behind him, to Wutala, and then out to the fiery wreck on the adjacent pad. Renner recognized the slight flicker in her eyes. She was making connections, weaving disparate threads into a fabric.

“Does the lockdown include launches for the landfill moon?” Arco asked, her voice perfectly mild.

The question made zero sense to Renner, but Wutala blinked, then narrowed her eyes. “Who burned my lab?”

“Orkutta Bryt,” Arco said the name with the deliberation of a croupier dealing cards on a betting table. “Works for Ho Piláol Holdings. Wholly owned by Amrak 438 Chemical.”

“What else?” One of Wutala’s hands formed a momentary fist.

Renner’s right knee chose that moment to give out. He pitched sideways, face-planting hard into the blue-haired sifter’s shoulder. Her heavy coat smelled strongly of industrial grease and stale sweat. He purposefully wiped his snotty nose against the fabric as the telepath and the sifter roughly hauled him back upright.

Arco’s expression was unreadable, though the glacial stillness of her posture would be noticeable to people who knew her. “Our deal was for an undamaged Mr. Brenner.”

“We can extract the rest of the information from you,” Wutala countered. Confidence laced her tone, making it clear she would enjoy the challenge of breaking a famous journalist.

“You can try,” Arco agreed with disarming, terrifying honesty. “I respect your skill with pain, and that you hire minders who are good at their jobs. But do you have the time? And can you tolerate the publicity? Everything I know about your operation is in Novo Granica’s auxiliary dataspace. Someone else is bound to figure out what ‘moonshot’ means.” Arco’s gaze turned diamond-hard, locking onto the crew chief. “We’re late for a party. Give me Brenner.” She held up her wrist, displaying a shiny percomp Renner had never seen before. “I’ll send your data.”