Page 32 of Spark Transform

Nodding, she tapped her earwire and subvocalized. “Bitehead was clever. Where are we going?”

He reached out with his talent to look for people and power surges. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

“Restaurant. Tōn Ko, scout ahead for an unpopular lift. Minan, what does ‘three strikes’ mean?”

“Copy,” said Tōn Ko, breaking into a fast trot and quickly moving ahead. He’d never been in the military, but he was picking up Minan’s terminology.

“Ancient sports term meaning three wrong things, enough to be more than coincidence. The lobby desk had a new occupant and too much dust.” Minan’s precise Standard English diction came through even when she subvocalized. “The XRAC people were all different. Forty minutes ago, their reception desk had personal stuff and a float chair. The new staff didn’t recognize their own board members. Does Ridderth street slang have a word for ‘I have a really bad feeling about this’?”

“Yeah.” Renner scowled at the world. “Fucked.”

He knew criminal crew setups, but didn’t know shit about high-class charities. Minan had been in the security business longer than he’d been alive. He trusted her judgment. If Charrascos didn’t like it, she could ream them all later. “Let’s move.”

They followed Tōn Ko’s directions to the lift he chose and took the shortest route to the restaurant’s rooftop.

N’Dwama had obviously picked up on their unease and launched the flitter a second after they sealed the doors.

Renner opened his coat and pulled the safety web across him.

Tōn Ko did the same, then opened the cold box and pulled out a pouch. “Sir…” He caught himself and shook his head. “Arco, want some water? We force-marched you for nearly a kilometer.” She’d firmly insisted they call her by her first name, not a title or any of the various cultural honorifics. Renner compromised by using her last name.

“In a minute.” Charrascos struggled with the seat web to pull her pink tablet out of her coat pocket. “I’ve seen the woman from the lobby before.” She finally freed the tablet, then unfolded it.

Minan, jacked into the flitter’s console, swiveled her chair to face Charrascos. “Today?”

Charrascos closed her eyes for a moment, then looked down and started interacting with her tablet at her characteristic lightning speed. She hadn’t told her team she was a filer, so he suspected the tablet was a cover for searching her eidetic memory.

Renner turned to look out the window. He knew fuck-all about taking care of people. He should have—

“Shit!” Minan spun forward. “N’Dwama, dump traffic control and climb! Go suborbital south if you can.”

N’Dwama slammed the control to force-exit the TCS and sent the flitter up at a steep incline. The flitter’s engines howled, and the hull creaked in protest.

A water pouch whizzed past his ear toward the back. Charrascos clutched her tablet to her chest.

Tōn Ko fought to swivel his seat around so it could support his back against the acceleration g-force.

Minan’s voice came over their earwires. “Emergency AIs are requesting prioritized passage to respond to five explosions across the city.”

The ass-end of the flitter wobbled like it had been hit. Something came loose and thumped loudly. Another water pouch escaped the cold box and bounced off his shoulder on its way back.

“You want to fly by skulljack?” asked N’Dwama.

“No, you’re better,” said Minan. “I’ll navigate. Ease vector to three-ten by south minus eight. Level to two-seventy once you hit fifteen thousand meters.”

The g-force pressure shifted from his back to his ass as the flitter’s ascent became more horizontal. Tōn Ko finally managed to close the cold box.

Minan’s voice again. “Continental TCS wants to connect.”

“Decline,” Renner ordered. “Tell it we’re trainers doing flight recovery exercises. We’ll connect once we’re too far from Arazak for them to make us come back.”

“Copy.”

He glanced at Charrascos. Her eyes were closed, but her hands still cradled her tablet.

A few minutes later, the pressure eased as the flitter assumed a fully horizontal attitude and the compensators kicked in. Renner slid himself upright from his acceleration-influenced slouch.

Minan swiveled her seat toward him again. “Do you want me to use the training excuse for why we exited Arazak TCS…” Her eyes blinked in rapid succession. “Holy shit. Another explosion just flattened half a city block. Ground zero was the building we left twenty minutes ago. Casualties are already estimated in the hun–”