Overload Flux Read online

  Even then, Mairwen couldn’t leave well enough alone. After she’d gotten free of Foxe, she’d ghost-shadowed the merc leader through the port. Her blandly corporate clothes and the crowds made it low risk, she’d rationalized. She’d ruthlessly suppressed this part of herself for a long time, even made herself forget she knew how, so it was unsettling how easily it came back to her, and how good it felt. Still, she caught herself making small mistakes that might have cost her in a higher-risk hunt, such as not taking smaller reflective surfaces into account where he could have seen her if he’d been looking.

  The merc leader ended up at a bank of pixcons. She didn’t know why he bothered with a secure connection when anyone nearby, even with normal senses, could overhear his side of the conversation, conducted in standard English, no less. Eavesdropping yielded nothing until the end, when he’d mentioned payment from Loyduk Pharma. The makers of the vaccine being stolen.

  Her first impulse had been to tell Foxe, but her cautious, rational brain that had kept her well hidden the past four years crushed the idea immediately. She’d have to tell him how she got the information, and she couldn’t do that. Security guards who showed initiative or extraordinary skills got noticed, and that would be the first step in a trail that would inevitably lead to her exposure and death. Or if the universe was really malicious, her recapture and reconditioning.

  Foxe would have to find the connection on his own. He probably would, anyway, as smart as he was. It would just take him longer.

  Her day did not improve when she got back to La Plata. Malamig ordered her to report to his office the moment she arrived. She wasn’t used to having to interact with him, or anyone else, on a daily basis. She was very ready to return to the comfortable solitude of the graveyard shift.

  He’d obviously had drinks with lunch, because the smell of garlic and grain-based alcohol was unavoidable, and he was seething, and his rural English Isles accent became more pronounced. He ordered her to sit.

  “You’ve been assigned to Foxe as one of his security assistants for his ‘special project,’ by direct order of the company president.”

  Clearly both Malamig and the universe were highly displeased with her. Malamig was likely feeling threatened by the loss of his authority, and she was a convenient target. The universe had no excuse.

  He told her tersely that she and the others assisting Foxe were being assigned company vehicles and pre-authorized use of a company flitter, which not even Malamig had.

  Mairwen didn’t want a special assignment or a vehicle; she wanted to be left alone. It was safer than being around Foxe and his sharp intellect and even sharper curiosity. Something of her reluctance must have broken through her usually neutral exterior.

  “Is there a problem?” he asked, obviously hoping she’d give him an excuse to sandbag the Investigation Division.

  She grasped for something he’d believe. “What about a contract?”

  “If you want to renegotiate your contract, you’ll have to ask your new pal Foxe, because I’m sure as shit not doing it for you.” His upper lip twitched in disdain. “What’s this special project, anyway?”

  She ignored his question. Malamig’s ignorance wasn’t her problem. By now, even the janitorial staff knew.

  Her silence must have goaded him.

  “You just don’t understand the concept of loyalty, do you?” he hissed. “When you need a new assignment from me after they dump you, you’ll be wishin’ you did. Are you really that stupid, or just a stubborn bitch?”

  Mairwen assumed it was a rhetorical question and waited for him to say something pertinent. He dismissed her with a snarl.

  While she was apprehensive about the visibility of working with Foxe, and the disturbing temptation he represented, at least he was vastly easier to put up with than Malamig, who’d grown considerably less tolerable in a very short time. She went in search of her new boss.

  CHAPTER 4

  * Planet: Gasprélodid Prime * GDAT 3237.028 *

  Hildree Fannar, whose comm card currently proclaimed her to be an independent security risk consultant, firmly told herself it wasn’t good business to kneecap the client’s representative. Even imbeciles like Tamanun Harado, Loyduk Pharma’s vice president of Market Assurance, which was corp-speak for their competitor spying and sabotage division. Other pharma companies she’d worked for had similar positions, though they usually had “strategy” or “intelligence” in the title, neither of which would ever apply to Harado. He’d made insane decisions from the start and gone downhill from then, so she was being paid very highly by Loyduk’s security director to take care of Harado’s “little problem.” Office politics sometimes created lucrative business opportunities for people in Hildree’s line of work.

  Her own nice paycheck notwithstanding, Loyduk had a reputation of being stingy, and too many of Harado’s actions reflected it. Unfortunately, she’d been ordered to take direction from Harado, the instigator of all the troubles in the first place.

  Now she sat attentively in the splashy top-floor-view suite and pasted a look of supportive interest on her face as he finished reading his report out loud, word for frecking word, with self-congratulatory asides as he went along. The same report he’d sent to corporate; the same report he knew she’d already read. His nasal, singsong tenor voice was grating, especially when he spoke Mandarin, and his delivery was that of someone reading to a dimwitted six-year-old. He finally got to the end of it and asked if she had any questions.

  She was sorely tempted to ask why his parents had let him live and who he had blackmail trids on that allowed him to keep his job. Instead, she asked, “What was this ‘special operative’ you got from your silent partner supposed to do, exactly?” She decided to keep the conversation in English, though she spoke Mandarin fluently. She wanted the flexibility that could be blamed on translation errors.

  She assumed the silent partner had connections to the chems and alterants blackmarket, although it was equally likely the government’s covert operations organization, the Citizen Protection Service, was involved. They had their fingers in a lot of pies, especially in the pharmaceutical industry. In her experience, the industry was a cutthroat, sleazy tangle of duplicity, corruption, and greed. Fortunately, it gave her many more options.

  “Since your leaker had already vanished, we needed to give La Plata somewhere else to look besides Loyduk,” he said defensively. Hildree barely suppressed rolling her eyes. Based only on the fact that she’d discovered the leak in his organization, he’d been desperately trying to give her ownership of the missing employee and probable whistleblower who’d been the instigator of the whole mess. He tried for an affronted look. “It’s not my fault the operative didn’t sell it.”

  “Of course not,” Hildree agreed in her best sympathetic tone. She wondered with sudden alarm if the delusional pinhead was thinking he could have done better “selling it,” and if she’d have to talk him out of personally playing spy. On the bright side, maybe it would get him killed.

  When the theft crew reported the presence of “mercs” in the warehouse, Harado had panicked and ordered the “mercs” killed immediately—then panicked again when the victims turned out to be investigators from a respected security company—and had the crew set up the scene to look like a robbery. The kills had been sloppy, and the crew had forgotten to cleanse the comps and search one of the bodies, so it was a fuckup already.

  Hildree didn’t blame the crew, who were professional thieves, not professional killers. She blamed Harado, who would no doubt see nothing wrong in asking plumbers to fix the electrical system while they were there, as long as it saved money.

  Harado, as was his habit when his decisions went horribly wrong, tried to shift the blame, this time to the crew for overzealousness, and her for not giving him good advice. He was making a shambles of the whole project, and unfortunately, she was stuck with him.

  Loyduk Pharma’s claim to fame was a group of ramper drugs, designed to improve huma
n strength and reaction times, and highly popular with athletes and military personnel. Too bad they didn’t make smart pills for their executives.

  She looked at her percomp and gave a show of surprise. “Oh my, look at the time. I’ll miss the ship if don’t get in the lane.” She stood and picked up her coat. “I’ll contact you once I’m on Rekoria.” For whatever reason, Rekoria, and specifically Etonver, had become the convergence for the project, so she’d manipulated Harado into ordering her to go there.

  “Yes, you do that, and I’ll give you instructions.” Harado was back in delusion mode, imagining she wouldn’t make a move without him.

  Letting the imbecile drone on had served the purpose of distracting him from giving her orders immediately, meaning she’d have more latitude to take more effective remedial action on her own. At least she now knew who La Plata’s new lead investigator was, and not to underestimate him. Fortunately, she’d already found a nice hook into La Plata’s organization, and planned to use it wisely. If she was lucky, she could neutralize the whistleblower and clean up the few loose ends before ever having to check in with Harado. He’d try to take credit, of course, but she’d make sure her client knew who was really responsible for the success.

  CHAPTER 5

  * Planet: Rekoria * GDAT 3237.029 *

  Ground traffic throughout Etonver was legendarily bad, and Luka counted himself lucky that the current traffic snarl was so far making them only thirty minutes late for the afternoon appointment with the independent testing lab Zheer had found. They couldn’t fly a flitter into the restricted medical district air space near the lab, so they were stuck dealing with the chaos on the streets.

  He was glad he’d chosen to sit up front with Morganthur. He often lost his temper in traffic, and her imperturbability at the stop-and-go progress made it less annoying to him. Her light overcoat, in boring company gray, hid a navy corporate suit, identical in cut to the green one she’d worn to the spaceport. He had the impression she valued practicality over style. He wouldn’t call her peaceful to be around, because he was too intrigued by her, but she was somehow calming. She was also the quietest person he’d ever met.

  “Morganthur, when they assigned you to me, did they tell you not to talk?”

  “No.” Her voice sounded low and rusty, as if she didn’t use it much.

  A ground skimmer that was weaving through the lanes came within centimeters of scraping their side panel, but she smoothly adjusted their position to narrowly avoid it.

  “Good,” he told her. “I’d hate to inhibit your natural garrulousness.”

  She glanced at him with a raised eyebrow and quirked a corner of her mouth in what may have been a smile, but said nothing.

  He laughed, delighted to discover she had a sense of humor. “I get the feeling you don’t do this very often.”

  “Drive?”

  “No, have a casual conversation.”

  “No.” An opening in traffic had them going faster for a moment, but it didn’t last. Horns sounded constantly, but were muted in the quiet vehicle interior.

  “Probably because you’ve been working the night shift and didn’t have anyone to talk to. Feel free to practice your conversational skills on me. It’ll distract me from obsessing about loose threads.” Of course, it wouldn’t keep him from being distracted by her instead. At least she wasn’t an obsession. Yet.

  He couldn’t tell from her expression if she was trying to formulate a reply or was simply focused on traffic. After a long silence, she said, “I’m bad with words.”

  “That’s what practice is for. Pretty soon, we’ll have you up to fifteen or twenty words at a time, maybe even two or three sentences in a row.”

  In between lane changes, she glanced at him as if she was unsure if he was serious or not. Finally she said, “Loose threads?”

  It was the first time she’d initiated conversation, so he didn’t mind that it was about work. It was a start.

  “The fact that Green never called for the reward. Why the losses are mostly the NVP 70 vaccine made by Loyduk Pharma. Why Balkovsky and Schmidt were in the warehouse at all. Why a theft crew had two merc-grade forceblades for a simple after-hours slice-and-haul.”

  “Why didn’t they kill Schmidt first?”

  The phantasms from his memory stirred uneasily, so he focused on Morganthur more closely. The spiky, asymmetric cut and darker tips of her pale blonde hair suited her strong but striking cheekbones and jawline, he decided. “They tried to, but Balkovsky got in the way. He was protecting her.”

  Her incredulous look said she thought it unlikely that an ex-Jumper needed protecting.

  “He was in love with her, which made him feel protective of her. Her waster’s disease was well into stage three, so she was slowing down. He was trying to distract their attackers and give her room to fight. He didn’t know two of them had forceblades.”

  He sighed in frustration at facts that didn’t make sense. “I’m not surprised a theft crew had misters, because those are good for derezzing comps and disabling unexpected guards, but forceblades need skill and make for messy kills. Not the usual thief’s choice.”

  “Reconstruction told you all that?” She wasn’t exactly accusing him of extrapolating well beyond the actual evidence, but her tone was skeptical.

  He realized that it was too fökking easy to talk to her, and now he was on dangerous ground. The reconstruction at the warehouse, what little he’d had time for, had only confirmed what his talent had already told him. “Mostly. Leo was a good friend, so I already knew how he felt about Adina, and that he’d have risked anything to keep her safe. She made it out of the service pretty much whole, but the waster’s was going to force her into retirement soon enough.”

  “It’s not in your report.”

  “No, it wasn’t relevant to... wait, you read my report?” She nodded, her face serious. None of his current or previous assistants had ever read his reports. Leo used to tease him mercilessly. Even Zheer had probably only skimmed it. “Most people don’t bother. They’re kind of dry reading for non-specialists.”

  “I’ve read worse.”

  He snorted. “Really? Name one.”

  “The most recent Etonver traffic study.”

  He laughed out loud. “Good lord, why did you read that?” He thought a moment. “Oh, I get it. Driving for me. Has it helped?”

  She shrugged a shoulder. “Too soon to tell.”

  “What other hobbies do you have besides reading odd things?”

  The look she gave him said she wasn’t sure why he wanted to know, or that she wanted to answer. Finally she said, “I run.”

  Yet another reason he was glad to have met her. “Would you go running with me? Velasco and Alhamsi won’t.” He smiled at her hopefully.

  Traffic forced their vehicle to a standstill. The dashboard display gave them an estimated delay countdown from Etonver’s traffic control system in Arabic numerals and Chinese characters.

  She gave him a long, assessing look, then looked forward again. “Yes.”

  He was inordinately pleased. Even Leo, his only real friend in Etonver, had refused to do that.

  The independent testing lab was in a medical building, one of several on the block. After Luka gave the lab custody of the packaged squibs from the warehouse, he and Morganthur went to meet with a pharmaceutical researcher named Dr. Eglatine Tewisham. Luka had arranged the meeting to get an expert’s view of the pharmaceutical industry, because Luka’s intuition said it was a key to understanding the case.

  Tewisham turned out to be a big-boned, furry man with red hair who looked more like a frontier farmer than a scientist, but his stylish clothes were expensively hand-tailored and his standard English accent was distinctively posh, maybe even Albion Prime posh.

  Luka introduced Morganthur as his assistant, then wondered why he’d never introduced Velasco in similar situations. Maybe because Tewisham’s eyes kept returning appreciatively to Morganthur. Which was an idiotic reason, beca
use Luka was pretty sure he wouldn’t care if Tewisham was interested in Velasco.

  Tewisham invited them to sit, then launched into a rapid-fire lecture on the background of how pharmaceuticals were developed, produced, and distributed, a process that turned out to be much more convoluted than Luka had imagined.

  “It’s a matter of liabilities and loopholes,” said Tewisham. “The pharma industry as a whole is obscenely profitable, so as you might imagine, competition is fierce. Pharmas prefer not to pay damages if their latest wonder cure turns out to be worse than the disease, so they’ve learnt to take advantage of every corporate ownership loophole in Concordance and planetary law they can find. Plus they’ve invented some new dodges that are still being tested in the courts.”

  Tewisham stood and began striding back and forth, as if he were on the dais in front of a university lecture hall full of D-level students, instead of in a corporate researcher’s office full of displays, holos, and stacks of real paper.

  “No one company owns more than a part of the process, so if the problem turns out to be, for example, harmful side effects, only the development company can be sued, not the production, distribution, or marketing companies.” Tewisham’s path took him closer to Morganthur’s chair. “Unless you can prove someone’s in bed with someone else.” He winked saucily at her. Her bland expression didn’t change.

  “Couldn’t you sue the owners of all the companies?” asked Luka.

  “Certainly, if you could find them and prove the relationship. Legally, the companies are independently owned and directed. Only shortsighted or greedy companies try to save money by keeping more than one function in-house. Profits to the real owners are funneled through silent partnerships, subcontracts, royalty payments and licenses, shell corporations, and so forth. Do you recall a popular drug called Pelderammodox? It was an antiemetic, used to treat nausea, that rendered long-term users sterile. It devastated sperm counts and destroyed female ova altogether.”