Destiny's Song (The Fixers, book #1: A KarmaCorp Novel) Read Free Page B

details—there was no chance in any planet’s hells that I’d get an answer, and I didn’t really want one. Commonwealth politics were as convoluted and labyrinthine as it got. I was just a Singer who did what I was told, and very glad to keep it that way.
    Time to get the down low on my assignment and get out of here. “Forgive my lack of patience, Director, but why are you sending me to Bromelain III?”
    “You’ll be observing Devan Lovatt.”
    I raised an eyebrow of my own, thoroughly confused. Fixers didn’t generally get sent to babysit, even for royalty.
    Yesenia’s hands played that riff on her knee again. “And a young woman by the name of Janelle Brooker.”
    Sometimes notes sound bad even before they’re played. “And who would she be, exactly?”
    “She’s the middle daughter of another well-respected colony family.” The boss lady’s game face did nothing to calm my gut. “The Brookers can trace their roots all the way back to the grain fields of Saskatchewan.”
    That bit of geography I did know. Canada hadn’t been the first of Earth’s countries into space, but they’d been one of the last left with water and land that could grow things, and that had fueled their colonization of half the star system. A country of pioneers used to cold and isolation, they’d had the right DNA for space exploration. That made the Brookers at least minor relations to galactic royalty, and Yesenia wanted to make sure I knew it.
    This was getting stinkier than a compost droid. We had two young people on some backwoods space rock, and either their family connections or some situation they’d managed to get tangled up in had qualified them for a high-security KarmaCorp intervention. “Did they get themselves into something sticky?”
    “In a manner of speaking.”
    I sat quietly, not at all sure I wanted to hear what came next.
    “Our astrologers believe the two are compatible and intended to marry.”
    I tried not to gape, shocked to the core that they’d pointed a StarReader at two kids on some outpost planet. Astrologers were a credit a dozen all over the galaxy, but KarmaCorp employed the ones who ended up right most of the time—and there weren’t nearly enough of them. They were the company’s most valuable commodity. “What, I’m supposed to keep the two of them out of trouble before the wedding?”
    “No. Apparently the two parties are not yet convinced of their future together.”
    That was crazy. “Nobody argues with a KarmaCorp StarReader.”
    Yesenia’s lips pursed. “They aren’t to be told. No one is. That information will not leave this office.”
    That was even crazier.
    She eyed me with a look that regularly froze the blood of people two decades my senior. “That directive comes from the highest levels, and you will comply with it, Journeywoman.”
    That could only mean StarReader edict. One that likely had far more tentacles than a simple marriage on some boondocks colony. I grimaced—and then the other shoe landed, the whole reason a Singer was being pulled into this mess. To create harmony where none existed. “No. No way.”
    Yesenia’s eyebrows warned of impending death should I choose to keep up my foolish babble.
    The knots in my gut cowered and kept talking anyhow. “That’s insane.” And far, far worse than babysitting.
    “That is for others to decide.” She was Yesenia Mayes in full throttle now, and no one would dare to cross her. “You will do your job, Singer, and you will do it with all the skill, talent, and training at your disposal.”
    Of course I would—there was never any other choice. Fixers did what we were told.
    But sweet holy shit. I was being sent off to a backwater rock—to be a matchmaker.

4
    I ’d forgotten how thirteen-year-old girls were such an odd mix of lingering child and the adults they would one day become. No boys in this class, but that wasn’t a surprise—Fixer Talents most often manifested in girls, especially at this