ShakenandStirred Page 3

  "Back into the uniform?"

  "Yes. Back into the uniform. I don't like it either. Your uniform fits far too well." His low grumble did wonders for her mood.

  She laughed and retrieved her suit from the foot of her bed. In under a minute she had it on under her sheet and he was watching in surprise.

  "Where did you learn to do that?"

  "I was a teenage girl sharing a room with a younger sister. I can change clothing without an inch showing any time I wish." She laughed at his consternation. The sheet slid to the floor and she quickly sealed the suit so that only the keyhole neckline exposed flesh.

  Mix was staring at her chest with a frustrated look.

  "Yes?"

  "I didn't notice how much your…assets were exposed. I believe I will put in a note to Fixer. The next batch should be more circumspect." He was staring straight down her cleavage.

  Snorting, she slapped one hand over the exposed area. "This is just fine. I am going to point out that most men will not be seeing me from this vantage point."

  He opened and closed his mouth a few times before he turned and muttered, "I will let you fix your hair."

  She was going to give him a nasty retort, but she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Bed head had taken over. She sat, brushed her hair out and then re-wove it into a tight cap with no loose ends.

  Her hairspray was still in the kitchen, so she applied it while leaning over the sink. "Why do you have a kitchen if you eat at the base?"

  "I have never had a reason to stay home." He was sitting on the stool at the kitchen counter.

  She sighed and spritzed her concoction on her head. The alcohol carried the scent of citrus as it evaporated and her hair locked together. "There we go. Nothing you can do is going to shake this hair."

  Mix smiled. "Is that a challenge?"

  Tosha narrowed her eyes, "No. I just hate running around with my hair looking like a haystack with bugs trapped in it."

  "Too bad. It could have been fun. Are you ready for breakfast?" He got to his feet and held his hand out.

  She rinsed the spray off her hands and extended her slender fingers to him. "Fine. Let's go."

  "With that resounding invitation, how could any man resist your charms?" He grunted obligingly as she elbowed him in the ribs.

  The base was buzzing with activity that morning. Shuttles with supplies were landing, carpentry was going on somewhere in the distance and a general hum of purpose was everywhere Tosha looked. It seemed the sleepy base of her first night was a thing of the past.

  "They certainly do get up early around here."

  "It has become a sort of challenge to get as much work finished while Might is gone as they can. He is an excellent administrator and the staff appreciate it." Mix held her close as an automated dolly swung near their path.

  "How many other Guardsmen are usually here?" It seemed surreal that they were the only two.

  "Well, Might, Finder, Frost, Past Tense, Midnight, Mist and Reset, so far. Oh, and Multiple Organisms with his partner, Gravity. It is a fairly well-stocked base."

  "Is that normal? That the base would have that many talents on it, I mean."

  "Yes. Ideally, there should be ten pairs of partners to each base, but they are trying to get a working level on each base."

  He opened each door for her with a casual ease that made her smile. It was definitely something she could get used to.

  "So, what will we do after breakfast?" After each door, she re-joined him with a hand on his arm.

  His solid blue eyes twinkled. "My dear, I want you to shake things up on the other side of the world."

  Chapter Six

  "When did you have time to set this all up?" They were flying over a battery of tectonic-absorption stations.

  "Two months ago when Alara sent the message. She was very specific about your needs."

  There it was again, her cousin's hand guiding her life. In this case, Tosha was pleased. She would be able to let her talent rip on a huge scale, something that would not have been possible back home.

  "How did you get your hands on this tech? I thought it was all restricted."

  He laughed at that. "The Sector Guard has been responsible for the majority of the new technology of this nature. It is the rules of the Alliance that restrict it. We simply get to be the testing ground."

  He settled their shuttle on a slab of rock surrounded by the absorbers.

  "That is a little much, isn't it?"

  "We want to be able to get home in the same shuttle we came in. If your talent gets out of hand, I can only carry you so far." He unlatched a chest at the back of the shuttle and withdrew a series of wires with connectors on them.

  "What is that?"

  "A monitor rig. You will wear it and when your talent is active, it will record all emanations and origins of your focus. It isn't invasive. You can put it on over your suit."

  She eyed the tangle. "Can you help me with that?"

  "Of course. Hands out at your sides. This will only take a minute." He draped the tangle of cables over one of her outstretched arms and went to work.

  She was wired up in a matter of moments, none of the attachments caused her any pain and she still had a free range of movement. It wasn't too bad at all.

  "What do you want to see first?"

  He looked as if he wanted to say something inappropriate, but instead, he gestured to the open plain beyond them. "Whatever suits your fancy once you clear the buffers. This is your moment to let your talent out. Enjoy it."

  Tosha took a few steps away from the shuttle, turned to watch him shoo her onward and then she started a slow sprint that turned into a full run with cartwheels as she picked up speed. Her school gymnastics came out as she flipped, twisted and spun into the centre of the plain.

  Tosha looked back at Mix in the shuttle and she started to shake the ground she stood on. Her thoughts began to play her favourite songs and she waved her hands in the air, cutting swaths in the ground as she began to sing along.

  The ground trembled, a few volcanoes shot up when she called them and in general, she had a wonderful time. Her muscles were humming pleasantly when she finished turning the plain into a maze of broken stone, new hills and steaming craters.

  Her walk back to the shuttle took considerably longer than her trip out, but she did what she could to heal the marks she had made as she walked. The volcanoes ceased their spewing, the fissures sealed up and fine tremors in the ground turned the craters into more gentle slopes.

  She was quite pleased with her efforts. The position of the sun told her she had been at it for hours.

  Mix sat on the steps of the shuttle with his head propped in his hands like a six-year-old. When she got within twenty feet, he stood up and started clapping madly. "That was amazing."

  She gave him a curtsy and a tired smile. "Thank you. That was a lot of fun."

  He helped her remove the wires and sensors, folding them carefully and replacing them in the case. "I can tell. The absorbers were having quite the time keeping the impact of your frolics under control."

  Free of the wires, she stretched and twisted to get her muscles to unclench.

  "There is a transmission from Morganti that we need to take. You can unclench on the way." He ushered her into the shuttle and closed the door behind her.

  She yawned and plopped into the navigator's chair. "What kind of transmission?"

  "I don't know yet. I only know it is encoded and we have to be verified before it will load the link to Relay." He moved quickly and lifted them from the safe surface of the buffered zone without delay.

  "Who is Relay?"

  "The commanding officer of Morganti base, same as Might is ours. Relay is hooked into all of the communication networks spider webbing throughout the Alliance and beyond. If there is something that we can do without being asked by any planetary body, she will send us to do it."

  "Is that how you guys keep busy?"

  He chuckled. "No, most of the ti
me, we are requested by governments and agencies who cannot deal with their issues on their own. We handle raiders, natural disasters, act as arbitrators, even occasionally engage in espionage as well as investigations."

  Tosha whistled low and long. "So, you go where you are needed and do what you can. That is fascinating. I really can't think of a practical application for my talent."

  Mix smiled and hit the thrusters. "I am sure we will think of something."

  Tosha sat back and with the expression on his face, she was convinced he already had.

  Chapter Seven

  The woman in the vid screen had very precise features, which were bracketed by a headpiece that extended from the crown of her head down to each cheekbone. "Vortex, thank you for getting back to me so quickly."

  "Not a problem, Relay. This is my partner, Tosha." He introduced them with a flourish of his hand.

  "Shake, I believe, would be suitable for her. Shake and Vortex has a nice ring to it." The woman's eyes gleamed.

  Tosha scowled. "Don't I get to pick my own alias?"

  "No, but if you find it unsuitable, you can tender an alternative to your commanding officer at a later time."

  It was reasonable, but it still didn't sit right. Her back got up every time someone tried to control her destiny and the name she would be known by was in that category.

  "Pleased to meet you, Relay. To what do we owe this honour?" She put a bit of sweetness into her voice, but Relay's gaze told her she wasn't fooling anyone.

  "There has been an escape on Talimatic, a high-security facility that caters to law-breaking talents. Normally, I would send a team from Udell, but they are busy. You are the only set that is free to handle this."

  "Send the info to our shuttle. Does the head of Talimatic know we are coming?"

  "I will make sure that they do. The escapee killed three guards and is heading to the wastes. Talimatic is not equipped for this kind of retrieval. He is one dangerous character." Relay's eyes flicked rapidly before regaining focus. "You have all the information. Fuel up and you have complete jump clearance."

  "Understood, Relay. We are on our way."

  "Thank you. Update me when you are finished. Take care. This is a dangerous assignment. Given a choice, I would not have had it be Shake's first."

  "I will take care not to disgrace the Sector Guard. I promise." Tosha smiled. She didn't have a chance to say anything else. The screen went blank.

  "Talimatic is one jump away. The shuttle is equipped with a gel shower and a month's worth of rations. Come on, Shake. It's time to meet your destiny." Vortex shoved her out of the room with a hand on her lower back and they returned to the shuttle just as the ground crew cleared it.

  She was boosted into the shuttle without ceremony and took her place at the navigator station. Shake buckled her harness into place and waited. Seconds later, the launch engines whined and she was shoved back into her seat.

  "We are taking the most direct route, going in fast and hard."

  She held the obvious remark back and let the seriousness of their assignment wash over her. The sky flew past them in layers as they climbed at a steeper incline than Shake had ever experienced before.

  "He's a killer, isn't he?" Her quiet words carried over the whine of the engines.

  Vortex kept his hands on the controls as the ship shuddered. "Three guards dead to escape? Yes, he is."

  "How can I bring up the file?" She stared at the nav station and tried to figure it out.

  He talked her through it and when the stats were displayed on her screen, her normally cocky attitude took a nose dive.

  Rumal Nukid, a Tival by birth, homicidal maniac by choice.

  "Read it out to me." His voice was tight.

  "Rumal Nukid of Tival extraction. He engaged in every form of DNA manipulation he could the moment he left his home world." She swallowed at the next portion. "He joined a raider team and stole young women and men who showed signs of developing talents on developing worlds. He wasn't shy about killing an entire village to obtain the one talent he was looking for. Once he had them, he sold them on the black market."

  "Bastard."

  "No kidding. His primary talents are elongating fingernails that double as knives and he calls fire. Talimatic has no idea how he got out of confinement, but he used his claws on the way out. Two of the guards had families."

  The low growl coming from Vortex's throat was not a noise she expected him to make.

  "The tracking implants put him in the middle of a salt flat. He isn't moving quickly, but he is still on their readouts."

  "How was he captured the first time?"

  "He crash landed on a water-based world with high-tech restraint equipment. The Solth enforcers restrained him and he was put in stasis until he landed at Talimatic. He has been there for six years."

  "Apparently, he was tired of it. Is there any detail about his accommodations?"

  "He was scheduled for restricted maintenance. Power suppressing food and forced manicures." She quickly read through the rest of the details. "There is something wrong here. Just a moment."

  She skimmed through the documents and hissed. "I found the problem. I think. I am not sure of the exact details, but I know something about grooming and this looks off." She shared her suspicion with him as they entered the jump while still inside the Teklan system.

  Her assessment surprised him. "You can tell just by reading that report?"

  "The reports were identical until a few weeks ago. That was when they changed. It was a tiny change, but at his growth rate, it is entirely plausible."

  "Stupid."

  "It could have been accidental. The only question I have is why he is heading for the salt flats? It seems a peculiar place to run to." She answered her own question. "Many criminals act on impulse. He could have simply run in a straight line."

  "From his earlier activities, he is a deliberate man. He has a plan. It could be something as simple as that we cannot sneak up on him in the middle of a salt plain."

  They approached the beacons and blockades that marked Talimatic as a protected area.

  She was getting nervous as he began to recite the clearances that they had been given. "Do we have any kind of weapons?"

  "No, and I am setting the ship to gene recognition combined with psi recognition. Put on one of those halos and let it take a reading."

  She removed the halo that he gestured to and settled it on her head. Her hair crunched lightly as she pressed the metal ring into place. Lights flashed on the board in front of her. They started at lavender and worked their way to a gleaming white.

  "You can remove it now. The ship knows who you are. He won't be able to use tissue samples or one of our corpses to start the shuttle for take-off. If he hacks into the controls, the ship will shut down."

  Shake got the idea that he was telling her this for a reason. "You expect us to die?"

  "I expect us to be prepared. We are going up against a homicidal maniac and I am trying to cover our basics. Nothing is more basic than life and death." Vortex was trying to bolster her spirits and failing miserably.

  "If we manage this, you are so going to owe me." She took a deep breath and centred herself. "Too bad I worked out this morning. I could have used more energy."

  "You will do fine. We will have him subdued and back in the prison in no time." Vortex's attempts to cheer her up almost made her laugh.

  "Spa day. Full body massage. Swimming lessons. I think I will deserve them all." She twisted her head and loosened her neck and the muscles that were tense.

  That distracted him. "You can't swim?"

  "I can but not very well. If I had slipped into the pool with only that sheet on, I would have been done for." She chuckled as he finished the final clearances that would allow them to approach the planet.

  He raised his hand. "Interesting. I volunteer for administering the full-body massage."

  "Then we had better survive this. There. We both have incentive now." She laughe
d as he took them to the final approach.

  He grinned and a gleam of anticipation came to those beautiful blue eyes. She didn't have the heart to tell him she couldn't leave without him. The shuttle was far beyond her abilities to fly.

  Once they landed, it would take off with Vortex at the controls or not at all.

  Chapter Eight

  Tracking a slowly moving Tival on a salt flat would have been easier if a predator hadn't eaten the embedded tracker.

  "He carved it out of his thigh, damn it!" Vortex was kneeling on the dirt examining the bird that was limping along the ground.

  "Can we scan for species?" Shake was keeping a lookout. She opened her senses to determine the composition of the ground she was standing on and idly worked through the layers. The mineral content gave her some trouble, but she muscled through.

  "Yes, but not very effectively. We have some hand scanners that will narrow things down once we get an approximate heading." He left the bird on the ground and turned back to the ship.

  Sweeping the area with her gaze, Shake moved back to the shuttle. The tension in the air was incredible. Her senses were on high alert when she came across a slight problem. There was a thin crust of dirt under their shuttle. The rest was hollow.

  "Vortex?"

  "Yes?"

  "We have a problem." Her feet were already on the steps to the shuttle so she remained in place.

  He looked at her in surprise. "What?"

  "Since we landed, something has dug out the ground under our shuttle. We are on a thin layer of dirt and minerals. Nothing else is keeping this shuttle up."

  He closed his eyes and moved slowly to hand her a scanner. "I programmed it for Tival."

  "Okay. Just let me…yes. He is underneath us. The bird was a lure." Shake was whispering. In her mind, if she could keep the noise down, they wouldn't collapse.

  "Can you do anything with the soil level?" He strapped a scanner onto his wrist.

  "Not without shaking us into the hole. Lava would work, but it would take too long to get that much of it here."

  Vortex nodded. "You start on that, I will move the ship." He moved past her and cautiously felt his way to solid ground.