Spark of Transformation

Chapter 1

Aseries of teeth-chattering jerks threatened to shake the sky shuttle apart as its autopilot AI landed and connected with the rail slots at the ground station.

A final jolt froze the shuttle in place.

Rain drummed on the shuttle’s hull. A mid-range synth voice repeated the station designator in five languages.

Arco Charrascos took her time releasing herself from the filthy webbing and helping it retract into the slot at the side of her hard seat.

Impatience urged her to get up and go, but she squashed it hard.

Rushing had caused nothing but trouble since arriving at Mabingion’s orbiting space station five hours ago.

The transition from the space station’s early evening, Galactic Standard Time, to local city time put them on the ground at two in the morning.

Besides, she wasn’t going anywhere until her security team cleared the route.

The shuttle’s rectangular cabin was big enough to hold thirty, so with only Arco, her team of three, and one stranger, everyone had their own cluster of seats and got to keep their luggage with them.

The dirty, dented sky-shuttle doors screeched open to reveal a gritty, gouged ramp leading down into a ground transport hub. The rain sounded louder as automated lights blinked on in the vaulted hub, revealing a green-walled, hexagon-shaped lobby.

Everything in the shuttle was a shade of green, too, from the textured floor to the green-tinted windows. Ridderth’s transport authority probably hoped the color would disguise the ever-encroaching blooms of mold. It didn’t.

Her stiff back and shoulders complained as she pulled her scuffed brown backpack from between her booted feet and up onto her lap. Her mouth tasted like dry lint balls, a side effect of breathing the shuttle’s aggressively dehumidified air.

From the large upper pocket of her raincoat, she extracted a weather hood to pull on over her warm knit cap and attach it to her collar, taking care that her communications earwire was firmly in place. The expensive hood gave her full visibility and protected her from getting soaked.

The lone unknown passenger stepped out of the shuttle and trudged down the ramp.

After a long moment, pole-thin Jaffasso, Arco’s newest team member, followed.

He’d volunteered to confirm the piloted aircar from Novo Granica Media was on the outside airpad as promised.

The Institute-trained Jaffasso’s condescension grated on Arco’s nerves, but she had to give him credit for diligence.

Ringo and Marcan stayed inside the shuttle with Arco. She missed the big, genial man that Jaffasso replaced, but he’d taken a cushy corporate job on another planet that let him spend more time with his family. And less time in the rain. Marcan had stepped up as team lead.

Arco stood and arched her back to stretch, then pulled on her backpack.

Her brief business trip off-world reminded her that the galaxy had at least five hundred better planets to be on than this one.

The old, sprawling megacity of Ridderth was a never-ending source of corruption that kept investigative journalists like her busy and making money, and made Arco Charrascos a recognizable name.

But it also made enemies, which was why she now had a full-time security team.

The shuttle door beeped a piercing complaint when Ringo moved to stand in front of it to prevent it from closing.

A gust of wind blew his wavy, bronze-tipped hair into his eyes as his upper lip curled in distaste.

“Ah, the sweet fungicidal smell of home. Thank the universe for nose filters.” He poked his hair under his hood and sealed it.

Despite his trim black beard, he looked young and innocent, causing would-be troublemakers to underestimate him. Thanks to his minder talent for ramping up, he could be preternaturally fast and strong. His talent for shielding meant telepaths and shifters couldn’t see it coming, either.

Marcan brushed off the back of her pants, then sealed her powered rain hood.

Slinging her bag behind her left her hands free to draw any of several weapons on her person.

She took pride in being prepared. A disgruntled look settled on her face.

Intense but pretty with military-short turquoise hair, she had a ready smile when she wasn’t sneezing with the remnants of mosaic travel crud.

Arco swallowed the urge to once more apologize to her team. She’d insisted on burning flux to catch the faster shuttle from the Mabingion Space Station to the surface, but they’d lost all the time gained and more when Ridderth’s city traffic control system had a meltdown. Again.

At the ground-based Ridderth spaceport, her team had chosen to take the traffic-prioritized public air shuttle instead of waiting for the city’s TCS to clear up the backlog of traffic. Staying on the move was safer than staying in the insanely crowded, impossible-to-secure public spaceport.

This time of night, public ground transportation or the skytrains — Ridderth’s substitute for the more common underground maglevs found in other population centers — would be jam-packed. Jaffasso had cleverly chosen a small station that put them on a mostly empty air shuttle.

After long minutes, Jaffasso’s communication tone pinged in her earwire, followed by his terse statement that the aircar from Novo G was waiting.

Arco adjusted her backpack and pulled the raincoat so it stayed closed. In the semi-desert community of her childhood, they’d called the rain “Gaia’s tears of joy.” In Ridderth, where it rained all the frelling time, the epithets were considerably cruder.

Ringo nodded at Marcan and stepped out through the wide opening onto the ramp.

Marcan’s focus jittered a bit, a sign she was using her minder talent.

Sifters like her could detect the presence of people nearby and whether they were activating their own minder talents or intending violence.

Marcan stepped onto the ramp and started down, motioning to Arco to follow.

The acrid antifungal smell burned Arco’s nose, making her again rethink her stubborn reluctance to get implanted nose filters like the permanent residents.

Arco’s shoulders hunched involuntarily against earsplitting percussion as the far wall exploded.

Marcan launched herself into Arco, twisting to take them sideways off the ramp onto the passenger platform below. Momentum rolled them into the narrow gap between the shuttle and the platform. They landed on the hard, wet landing pad underneath.

Arco’s padded backpack took the brunt of the impact, but it felt like a punch to the kidney with Marcan’s weight on top of her. Debris landed on Marcan’s back and all around them.

“Ghost, I’m down. Get Eagle and Orion out…” Even through the earwire, Ringo’s voice sounded pained.

Jaffasso, code-named Ghost, didn’t answer.

“You okay?” Marcan’s whisper tickled Arco’s ear. She smelled incongruously of raw metal and sweet jasmine.

Arco ignored her protesting back muscles. “Yes.”

Marcan dropped her bag, then slid her legs beside Arco’s and levered up to her hands and knees.

She caught Arco’s eye. “Stay down.” She took two quick peeks above the ledge, then climbed slowly and carefully onto the passenger platform and moved out of view.

Arco heard her subvocalize through the earwire. “Moonshine, where are you?”

Ringo’s faint answer took long seconds. “Under the central kiosk.”

“Ghost. Report.” Marcan’s order demanded a response.

Silence, except for the synth voice warnings from the air shuttle about its still-open doors and the ringing in Arco’s ears.

Wrestling her backpack forward, she opened it quietly.

She lacked fight skills or emergency medical training, but she had tools at her disposal.

Tapping awake her wristcomp, she sent orders to the array of tiny flying cameras she always carried.

She ordered them to spread out and randomize their flight pattern so they wouldn’t rise like agitated bees and give away her position.

A composited realtime holo image formed as the cameras sent data. The passenger station looked like the aftermath of an urban riot or a theft crew’s hurried slice-and-haul. Interior lights fluctuated and blinked their distress.

In the holo, Marcan scuttled quickly toward the upended column that used to be the ticket kiosk, now pinning Ringo’s legs. One was bent at an ugly angle.

Cameras keyed on movement near what had once been the front entry.

The image showed Jaffasso climbing over the rubble.

He looked irritated, with a muddy, bloody scrape on the side of his face where he typically wore his earwire.

His lips shaped words as he dodged the columns of rain where the roof had failed, but her cameras weren’t close enough to hear what he said.

Guilt prodded her to do something, but she stayed put.

The hardest lesson she’d had to learn, once she’d become enough of a target to need a security team, was to follow their orders and let them do their jobs.

Ringo and Marcan had been with her since she’d returned to Ridderth and signed a contract with Novo Granica Media.

One of her better ideas had been to ask for help in hiring her team as part of that contract.

Novo G had become security experts the hard way.

They’d originated thousands of top-trend, often-cited, highly incendiary investigative stories in their sixty-year history.

They had many more enemies than Arco did.

Rain fell through the holes in the roof. The station’s lights now strobed erratically, causing the cameras to keep moving for better angles. Jaffasso walked quickly toward Marcan, who was on her knees next to Ringo, using a medical hand-scanner.

Jaffasso looked intently toward the debris-covered air shuttle.

From her hiding place, Arco heard him with her ears as well as via sound pickups in the cameras. His voice was loud and tight with tension. “Where’s Orion?”