Page 73 of Spark Transform

A rush of ice took his breath away, then made him sweat like a sponge squeezed tight. His heart tried to claw its way out of his chest. Time stretched to infinity as the rage monster and the happy butterflies brawled, heedless of his already bruised brain cells.

Lights blinked overhead. Soft alert tones sounded, followed by the spaceport’s pleasant synth voice announcing further launch delays.

The male voice growled what was probably a vicious oath. “I’m going home tonight if I have to steal a snowplow.”

“Your funeral.” The warning in the female’s voice made it clear she wouldn’t be with him.

The male grunted.

“Dimud wants to know how long until we get there.” The female’s voice now sounded quite close.

“Twenty minutes, unless they want to get off their fat ass and come help drive this thing,” said the male with distinct irritation. “They better damn well be prepping the container for launch.”

Another wave of ice flushed through Renner, this time in his belly, turning his guts inside out. Acid bloomed in the back of his throat. He tightened his jaw against any ideas his stomach might have about expelling its contents.

Fuck, but he was tired of fighting every day just to survive. Maybe he should just wait for the chance to take out as many enemies as he could before they killed him. Too bad it wouldn’t be the CPS instead of a crew just trying to make a living.

But it wouldn’t be much of a death worth dying for. And he’d be breaking his vow to protect Arco if he gave up now. The rage monster stomped on the last of the happy butterflies.

He had twenty minutes to recover from the inhib side effects, get his body back, and regain the use of his talent. The universe fucking hated him.

Arco took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Once again, she regretted not having temporary nasal filters installed to deal with the eye-watering smells of Ridderth.

The Ridderth spaceport was always a chaotic mess on its best days, but the century cyclone had turned it into a full-blown madhouse. Navigating the through the crowds of unhappy passengers to get to the commercial shipping and freight terminal with her team felt like moving through a hostile, high-gravity environment. The freight terminal had few people but more logjams of automated carts that randomly blocked the wide corridors, and frazzled spaceport staff offered nothing but useless shrugs to the shipping employees trying to get answers.

Thanks to Minan’s relentless poking at the public transit systems, they had arrived ninety minutes early for the meeting with Wutala. Arco used the time to deploy her flock of micro-cameras, hiding them among the buzzing advertising bots and children’s flying toys that littered the terminal’s airspace to scope out the specified dock.

The rent-a-pad section was cheap for a reason. The dock space walls didn’t quite reach the ceiling, bleeding noise and even more unpleasant odors from neighboring pads. If you wanted privacy, amenities, or loading help, you paid double for the high-rent tier. Arco hadn’t been able to reconfirm her ride off the planet since arriving, and the relentless synth-voice announcements of weather delays gnawed at her abused nervous system.

Her ride was supposed to be waiting at the pad directly adjacent to Gezi Wutala’s coordinates. She wrestled with the uncomfortable suspicion that Wutala knew about it. Adding to Arco’s anxiety, a muffled crash outside the building just before they arrived had set the terminal on edge, fueling rumors of downed ships or terrorist attacks.

They finalized their deployment in the shadow of a stalled gravcart. Tōn Ko and Minan would flank Arco as her visible crew. N’Dwama, who navigated the sprawling spaceport like it was her own backyard, slipped away to find a better vantage point for surveillance, using her sifter talent to identify what kind of minders were backing up Wutala.

At exactly one minute before the agreed time, Arco stepped up to the double doors of the launch pad’s dock space and pinged the wallcomp. The doors slid open with a gritty screech, revealing a cluttered room that looked like it hadn’t been thoroughly cleaned since the fall of the Central League.

The far wall was constructed of thick, scarred glascrete, offering a sweeping view of the attached launch pad and the skeletal gantries of its neighbors. Outside, the spaceport’s blazing floodlights fought a valiant, losing battle against the blinding blizzard. A behemoth tracked tank with a massive shovel attachment was currently scooping snow and shunting it into a trailing hopper. Somewhere out in that frozen mess, Arco prayed her independent trader friend was still waiting for them.

She pulled her attention back to the room. Three people waited amidst the scattered crates. A woman in a heavy coat with electric-blue hair piled high on her head. A slightly taller man wearing gloves and a face-obscuring hood. And Tycall, the ramper with the tawny lion’s mane and feline-predator body mods Arco had read about in her hasty research.

Dismay tightened Arco’s chest. Gezi Wutala wasn’t here. Had she decided a midlist journalist wasn’t worth her personal time?

Suddenly, an icy pressure scraped against Arco’s mind. Her newly installed mental shields flared, holding firm against the telepathic intrusion. The days of relentless, aching headaches were finally paying off. From the slight, almost imperceptible shifts in Tōn Ko and Minan’s stances beside her, she could tell the telepath was probing them, too.

N’Dwama’s voice crackled softly over the secure earwire. “Muscle-mod Tycall is a ramper. Blue-haired woman is a sifter. Hooded man is a telepath. Three more in the office. No eyes on them, but one is a normal, and one is a shielder. The third is telepath immune. Brenner, maybe?”

Arco kept her expression blank, carefully giving no sign that she had heard anything. After a long moment of silence, with no one in the room moving, N’Dwama spoke again. “Shielder and immune coming your way.”

The inner office door slid open. Gezi Wutala stepped out, accompanied by a tall, rangy man in a loose gray tunic and pants. Even in the dingy dock space, the crew chief commanded the room. She wore a close-fitting red jacket, dark pants, and fur-lined snow boots that accentuated her lush figure and smooth dark skin. She looked exactly like a woman who ran a ruthless criminal empire and enjoyed every minute of it.

Gezi stopped about eight meters away, her dark eyes locking onto Arco. “You have something for me?”

“Depends,” Arco replied, keeping her voice perfectly even. “Where is Faraday Brenner?”

Gezi’s gaze drifted to Tōn Ko, then Minan, lingering on the bags slung over their shoulders. “You all have bags. Going somewhere?”

Arco knew a shark’s game when she saw one, but knew she had to play it. She forced a breezy, conversational tone. “Rotten weather we’re having. Pays to be prepared.”

Another probe, harder this time, slammed against Arco’s shields. It felt like a laser trying to burn through incalloy. She hid her wince as the hooded man leaned slightly toward Gezi and subvocalized something. Gezi cast a newly speculative look at Arco.