Page 22 of Spark Transform

Josh poured wine into three glasses. “Me, too.” He slid the glasses within reach, then sat at the table. “I sleep better at night with shields.”

Tuzan sat and slid a bowl of spicy vegetable soup toward Josh. “Neirra did the right thing, sending you my way.” He touched his fingers to his chest above his heart. “To loyal friends.”

Soleil touched her fingers to her chest to acknowledge the pledge. Josh did the same. She, Josh, and Tuzan had all willingly volunteered for their respective careers, only to discover the dark, debilitating costs of their service.

By tacit agreement, they kept the conversation light so they could enjoy the excellent meal. Jumpers learned to eat anything, but she appreciated the luxury of good food and the leisure to savor it.

“So,” said Tuzan, pushing back his empty plate, “what did you think of Arco Charrascos?”

Soleil leaned back in her chair, taking the last sip of wine to give herself time to think about what to say. “She’s chaos energy.” She waved a hand. “Don’t get me wrong, I really like her, but she’s sharp as a molecular knife. Driven. She’ll be in our airlock before we even know it’s been breached.”

“What makes you say that?” Josh chased the last of the peas around his bowl with his spoon.

Soleil put her empty glass on the table. “I threw her in with the wolves, meaning I encouraged my street-smart, cynical students to ask her questions. She got more out of them than they did from her, and I don’t think she was even trying.”

“Like what?” Tuzan asked.

“Like Fish’s asshole older brother is pushing her to the breaking point, and there’s a collision coming. Vasil’s aunt works in a body parlor, which is why they look so pretty. Haseem creates poetry. Rustom is out of work again.” She waved her hand. “I could go on.” She blew out a noisy breath. “I think it’s already too late to keep her away from our jump points.”

“What did you learn about her?” Josh’s accent took on a hint of Nordic, meaning the bomber voice in his head was making itself known.

She didn’t much like the bomber personality, but its inherent paranoia had saved Josh’s life and hers more than once.

“How independent journalists make money, and that she changes her look regularly.” Soleil shook her head. “I tank at covert intel gathering.”

Josh snorted. “I’d change my look regularly, too, if my news stories regularly pissed people off. Her online avatar is memorable and hasn’t changed in years. Maybe it’s like a brand identity.” His face scrunched in thought. “Maybe she has more of them. I never thought to look.”

“How do journalists make money?” asked Tuzan.

Soleil explained about publishers, thieves, and the services that chased them.

Tuzan and Josh exchanged a look. Soleil knew it well. Something she’d said sparked an idea for their joint project, version next-n of their “hydraworm” system.

Separately, Josh and Tuzan each had nova-hot coding and data manipulation skills and similarly devious minds. Together, they’d invented the hydraworm to exploit unguarded perimeters, upload their treasure troves of minder data, and make it seem as if it came from internal sources.

As near as she could understand, the hydraworm searched for insecure official records portals to insert the minder veteran health data they wanted to share with the public. If the data got purged, the worm prioritized it by inserting two copies in other random locations. The more the CPS tried to expunge the data, the more copies showed up in obscure galactic and planetary government systems across the galaxy.

A newer worm variant looked for poorly protected CPS data in motion and stole a copy to publish it in the same way. Josh and Tuzan wanted to give data divers the evidence they needed to corroborate the health data.

As a result, internal and confidential CPS information had spilled to the public net in obscure and unlikely places. Most of the data was prosaic and boring, some was interesting, and a small but significant percentage was explosive.

“What are you two scheming now?” Soleil exaggerated her querulous tone.

Josh laughed and patted her shoulder. “I’ll let Tuzan explain. He’s better at it.” He took the gathered dishes to the kitchen.

Tuzan stood and stretched. Soleil decided she really did like his new look. She wondered what his other friends thought, and realized she’d never met any of them. Probably by design. If she got detained for helping Tuzan’s passengers — active-duty CPS Minder Corps employees and their families — escape and disappear, she couldn’t betray people she didn’t know. It had to be hard on Tuzan to compartmentalize his personal life. She hoped he had love in his life beyond what she and Josh could offer as friends. He deserved that.

Tuzan brushed table crumbs onto the floor for the cleaning bots to find. “The CPS data divers have finally figured out how Hydra One works. Their stop-gap defense is an adapted anti-corruption method that adds markers to our data that can be backtraced to the origin point.” He followed her to the kitchen while she dumped the food containers into the recycler. “If Josh is thinking what I’m thinking, we can add an integrity check that functions like the services Charrascos told you about.”

Josh’s eyes gleamed. “We could start our own media-license tracking service as a cover. That way, none of our drifts would be referencing a private source.” He smiled. “We’ll offer a steep startup discount to all the media companies on Mabingion for the pre-launch shakedown.”

“Yes,” said Tuzan, “and we could make a referenced fact-checker, like Crazy Crap My Cousin Says, but seeded with real CPS data. We can pull drift sequentials and populate them from source seed integrals–”

“Ack!” Soleil held up her hands in surrender. “Concept overload.” She blew a kiss to Tuzan, then kissed Josh for real. “I’m taking the last custard puff to the media chair and learn how to pilot the new Nebulosa-class exploration starship.” She snagged the dessert plate and headed toward the door.

“Wait,” said Josh. “What do you want to do about Charrascos?”

Soleil turned to look at them both. “Based on her work, she values justice highly. We know she knows how to keep secrets, or Brenner would be dead. She knows a hell of a lot of people.” She shrugged. “I’d rather have her as a friend than an enemy.”