Kaplan retraced his steps to the old escape passage he'd used to reach the surface. The second he and his newly acquired asset were inside its airlock, out of reach of the drug-addled vermin hunting them, he ran a diagnostic on his psi-tech—something he'd wanted to do ever since getting within five metres of Jinsin Koel.
As the airlock counted down its cycle, he eyed her and waited for a verdict on his tech. Behind cheap day goggles and the dark hair escaping her hood, inked sienna eyes watched him in return. The port officer looked like the sad aftermath of a drunken night out, like she'd dragged herself to work straight from someone else's bed. But she kept her slim fingers wrapped around the stunner holstered at her thigh, and beyond the smudged eye makeup, her mind worked overtime.
He could sense that at least, like the roar of a distant river. But even with the interpreter in his implant and the amplification tech in his headset, he couldn't get much from the rapidly changing signals. Just a haze of indistinct emotions and psionic white noise where there should have been high level thoughts.
The woman was definitely a problem. Any hope of a quick intel grab was out.
His diagnostic results streamed onto his mask's HUD as the airlock completed its cycle. No tech malfunction identified. Just evidence of a mild psi burn—the lingering effects of his time in the port. Nothing unexpected.
That was good and bad news.
He triggered the airlock's internal door release and gestured for the CI to precede him. After a wary beat, she complied, stepping out into a rundown passage cluttered with empty crates and fuel drums.
She didn't drop her hand from her weapon.
The woman had to sense his mood, which grew edgier every second he was in her company. She was a headache literally and metaphorically.
Within a minute, she'd pegged him as Coalition military. While he didn't fit the local criminal profile—strung-out and decorated with cheap body mods—a lot of ex-military worked the backworlds. She should have assumed he was a merc. The Coalition rarely needed to deploy troops to commercial colonies; the mine corps looked after their own. Clearly, not tranqing her like a piece of livestock had been a mistake.
And none of that should have mattered. He should have been able to stifle any inconvenient observations and take the intel he needed without her even being aware of him. Nothing appeared to be wrong with his psionics, so what was wrong with Jinsin Koel?
In the dim passage, she yanked down her goggles and breather and checked for unwanted company. As he resealed the airlock, she turned back to him, lips twisting. "You wanted a conversation? Talk. You can start by explaining what the hell is going on. And why you aren't liaising with port management when there's a goddamn Xykeree battle barge on site. People could do with some input from the military right now."
Kaplan lowered his mask, tucked it under his borrowed overshirt, but left his hood up. "I think we should start with you explaining what business you had out on the surface. The ghetto is an unusual place for a CI without backup."
"Don't get any moronic ideas." She knocked back her therm-pro's hood and swiped sweat and dust from her face. Strong features, sharp eyes. Not the delicate flower of Officer Tipp Olsen's dreams. "I was speaking to a contact who can get me some information on a work-related matter. And no, you don't need the details."
Kaplan detected a spike in her heartbeat but nothing useful in her mental patterns. Not being able to assess the truth of her words and grab the details she'd just warned him off was unsettling.
She was definitely aberrant. One of those rare cases in which severe mental irregularities prevented a psionic read.
He'd encountered three others in the past, the first at the Rha Si Academy as part of his training. Even as a senior student, an enuri about to graduate, he'd taken hours to tune into the woman's mind. Finally syncing with it had been deeply disturbing. The subject had been intellectually brilliant but mentally ill.
Years later, as a fully trained Rha Si senuri, he'd crossed paths with another couple of aberrants: one female Throlean damaged by long-term drug abuse and a human male with a recent head trauma.
Taking a seat on an empty fuel drum, Kaplan interfaced with his neurotech and re-examined the intel Fero had dredged up on the port officer. She didn't appear to have a heavy drug habit, but according to rumour, both her parents did. Parental drug abuse could lead to brain-development issues in offspring.
Ms Koel, however, wasn't displaying the typical symptoms. Her brain seemed to work fine—sharp as a tack. The tap of her fingers against her stun weapon was no physical tic. Just a message for him to stop wasting her time.
"That dead-eyed look is a giveaway, you know?" She dropped down onto a crate opposite. "You have headtech, don't you? I have a friend with it. You must be some kind of fancy void hound to have that expensive shit in your skull."
"I was just reviewing the intel I have on you." Expecting it, he was able to isolate an emotional signature: anxiety—possibly even actual fear. The CI had strong feelings about him investigating her. Possibly a sign of corruption. Predictably, anger scorched his psi-tech next. Given time, he'd decipher her mental patterns.
But time was not something he had much of. And figuring out the woman wasn't mission critical—something to be grateful for. No Rha Si wanted to work with an aberrant.
He'd get what information he could through non-psi means then deliver the officer back to her colleagues as promised. Curiosity wasn't a good enough reason to bloody his mind on a mental brick wall.
"The Xykeree vessel you inspected. Tell me about it."
The CI tapped slim fingers on her stunner a few more beats. Testing her—provoking her—hadn't won him any points. "And I ask again, why aren't you dealing with port management?"
"They didn't board the Bullhead."
"So, you're not here to help. You have an agenda. Great." Her tone would have been dry even without the dust- and heat-roughened edge. Contralto. A voice designed to put people on notice—or tick them off. Perversely appealing. "I don't share sensitive information with people on the basis of them not tranqing me. You want a report, give me some ID."
He focused on the white noise of her mind—got nothing except a sharpening of his headache. He wouldn't be able to wipe any inconvenient knowledge she gained or add a compulsion to hold her silence, like the one all his team and other non-psi in Rha Si society submitted to. "ID can be faked."
"That irritated look tells me yours isn't. Hand it over."
He debated whether to. Find the right physical or psychological pressure point and he'd get his intel without giving up information. Unfortunately, he didn't have time for an interrogation, and any desire to torture the aberrant port officer was just his black mood talking. On another day, he'd have appreciated the don't-fuck-with-me tone and the coldblooded way she'd shot a deadbeat in the face.
Those wary, dark eyes.
He retrieved her wrist com, brought up its ID reader, and placed it over his wrist where his ID 'pip' was embedded. His official Coalition citizen profile appeared on screen, or at least, the version of it approved for his current mission.
The CI got up to view the data. "Lieutenant Commander Reid Nathanial Kaplan." She let out a low whistle. "In dress uniform. My heart's all a pitter-patter. Bet you come from a proud military family. Probably got raised on one of those hyperspace-capable support bases and were brainwashed since birth. That zero-alpha citizen code you have says you're a population-ship brat."
Kaplan blanked the screen and tucked the com back in his pocket before she could surmise his entire life history from a few lines of data. The woman could profile—inconveniently well. But he could hardly criticise her for doing her job.
He'd have violated the privacy of her mind to do his.
The thought tweaked his conscience as she resettled on her crate. He might have been designed to invade minds, but being a strong empath, he'd felt the horror of those who'd become aware of the intrusion. He'd felt his team's distrust. They worked well together now, but none would invite him for a drink after a mission. None wanted him to meet their families. The Rha Si High Council's propaganda about benevolent leadership still rang hollow to them, and he'd chosen to leave them with that survival instinct.
He eyed the aberrant before him, an individual he couldn't violate or manipulate. No easy puppet. There were risks in dealing with her, but also a sense of relief.
Not a reaction his superiors would appreciate. And not helpful for gaining intel.
"The Xykeree," he prompted, aware he'd stared too long.
His tech caught an acceleration in her heartbeat, but the nerves stayed internal. "You know why they're here, right?" Her lips curved, barely painted, like she'd chewed the colour off or let someone else ruin it for entertainment. "They're claiming pirates attacked them."
An up-tick in his own pulse, one that had nothing to do with that news.
Kaplan prudently returned his gaze to the woman's inked eyes. "You see anything that indicates otherwise?"
The CI eyed him, assessing him a moment longer, before straightening with a curt exhalation. "The images of their hull are inconclusive." Her tone became brisk: a report. "Some heat scoring. Might or might not be recent. I saw evidence of a couple of minor explosions on board, but I don't think they're related to any predator attack. Looked like exskel fuel-cell malfunctions." She narrowed her eyes on the last, teeth catching her lower lip, causing another anomaly in his pulse. "Is roach tech prone to them? An engineer friend of mine's of the opinion Xykeree cybernetics are past their best-by date, and the med bay inventory seemed to show an increase in supply requests over the last few weeks."
Kaplan let that unexpected intel and his personal reaction to the woman sink in before answering. "As a species, the Xykeree are not naturally innovative." But the aliens knew their tech and that of their enemies. As for malfunctions, stats hadn't been gathered, but the rates had to be low. The Xykeree ruthlessly retired damaged or aging hive members. Even the breeding queens, the most valued members of their society, eventually got dragged down into the larders to feed the next generation. "How'd you get a copy of the med data to translate?"
"I didn't. Just caught a glimpse, and probably only because they knew I couldn't read their glyphs. Unfortunately for them, I've a good memory and a thing for patterns." The CI leaned back on her makeshift seat. "Can't be sure what they were reordering, but I recognised entries that were consistent with dates."
Kaplan processed that. Good memory and pattern recognition. Most likely a high IQ. "You have an unusual mind, don't you, Ms Koel?"
Her psionics spiked. Her pulse thudded—his along with it. A sympathetic reaction like he'd had with Sun earlier. But worn control or not, it shouldn't have happened. Not with this woman—an aberrant. Not this soon after meeting her.
But whatever its cause, the lapse allowed him to identify the strong emotion his question had inspired. Fear.
She met his stare head on, outwardly as assured as ever. "If you mean I'm not pharma baked and can remember more than my damn name, then yeah, I'm 'unusual'. I also know frigging trouble when I see it. What's going on? The roaches were aggressive and in a hurry to get full planetary clearance. They threatened to 'void all agreements' if I didn't comply with their demands. At the time, I assumed they meant the landing conditions set by the port, but I found an organic on their deck that looked like human blood."
"That the substance you filed a warrant request for?" Kaplan forced himself to relax and focus on the intel. But that no longer related only to the Xykeree. Using his implanted tech, he started an analysis of his information on the CI, looking for certain key words and images. His question about her mind had bothered her more than the blood she'd apparently found—and she had to be sweating over that discovery. Like most of the general population, she wouldn't be aware of the Xykeree's bad habits.
"Okay..." Her inked lashes flicked up and down a beat. "One, you don't seem overly disturbed by what I found. Two, you must have hacked into the port's official coms to know about that warrant."
He lifted a brow. "Who isn't tapped in on this rock? You're lucky you're running a disruption program on your tech or your location would be known to every bounty hunter within three klicks." He pulled her com out of his overshirt's pocket. Tapping it against his unit, he connected the devices and ran a quick scan for tracer malware and for data relevant to his background check. Invading her privacy didn't bother him; when gathering intel, you always looked at the source. And despite not wanting to be, he was curious. What injury or disease was behind her aberrance? What worried her more than blood and armed alien cyborgs?
He reviewed the security scan results. "Looks like someone has managed to load a tracker. Fortunately, your masking app has disabled the report-back function."
"How the—? Shit." She shoved a hand into her hair, wrenching loose more dark strands from her ponytail. "Frigging mine corps. The bastards can't believe someone could actually make a decision that isn't connected to profit. Maybe I should make this 'meeting' they want with me. Shoot a stun bolt up their arses."
Kaplan left his neurotech to analyse the data he'd copied. "The Xykeree also want to talk to you about the quarantine."
"Yeah..." A roll of inked eyes. "They have 'debris' to recover. Except I suspect that's a serious over simplification. The geo sensors in the grid sec they're interested in recorded a disruption consistent with a large explosion about six hours ago. I've got a friend looking into it."
Kaplan stilled. His pulse gave a hard beat. "An explosion?"
"Uh-huh. Only a few hours' drive from here. A Xykeree Dark Ray has gone into stationary orbit right over the event site. My buddy is sending a supersonic air droid to see what's so damn interesting. Should have visuals soon."
Kaplan knew what they'd show.
Blackened metal and polymer. Melted sand.
If the Xykeree were interested in that site...
Finding out what Jinsin Koel knew was an even higher priority.
So was evacing his team.