Destiny's Song (The Fixers, book #1: A KarmaCorp Novel) by Audrey Faye

waved her hand at the dashboard. “Do you trust an old fart to drive, or would you rather I went on auto?”
    I would far rather be flown by an old woman than by a pseudo-sentient glass bubble. “I’m fine with manual—I grew up on a mining asteroid.”
    “Ah.”
    A whole lot of understanding in one syllable—too much, maybe. “Ever been on a digger rock?”
    “A few times.” She adjusted settings on the dash and lifted Nijinsky off the ground smoothly. “It struck me as a hard life with a lot of knocks and not enough joy.”
    There had been some. I stared out at the vista below, trying not to think too much about a past where I’d never quite known whether I was running from or toward, and let the grasses do their hypnotic work on my tired eyes.
    I woke up when Tameka banked hard right and sent my head to wobbling. The view hadn’t changed much, but I had no idea how long I’d been out. “Sorry—I don’t usually fall asleep on the job.”
    “You wouldn’t be the first visitor the grasses have put to sleep.”
    “I hope most of them aren’t driving.”
    She chuckled, and then banked again, less steeply this time, and glanced over at me curiously. “How’d KarmaCorp find you?”
    Apparently a nap hadn’t put the personal conversation to rest. “Accident. A small trader ship was out on patrol, had a Singer on board. They got lost and ran into the side of the rock I lived on.”
    Tameka winced, as did pretty much everyone who heard that chunk of my history. “I assume the Singer survived.”
    For a while. Not everyone else had been so lucky. “My dad and I were out running a survey and picked up the SOS call. When we got there, the Singer was trying to hold the trader vessel together long enough to get everyone out.” The memory of her single pure, clear note ringing out into the galaxy still brought me to the edge of tears.
    “Amelie Descol,” said Tameka, voice reverent and sad. “I heard the story. I didn’t know she’d also found a trainee.”
    Sending that message to KarmaCorp had been her last act before she died. They’d come for me a couple of months later, one ratty brat from a mining rock who had no idea why she heard music inside her head—or why she’d needed, every night for two months, to walk out under the dark sky and sing Amelie’s note up to the stars. “Someone would have found me eventually.” KarmaCorp’s Seekers rarely missed.
    “Likely.” Her eyes scanned the horizon. “Were you happy to be found?”
    “No.” I wasn’t sure why I’d answered—this had somehow become an uncomfortably deep foray into the personal. I could still feel the wordless fury of the fiery demon child who had discovered that her new destiny had even less flexibility than her first—and far fewer dark tunnels to hide in.
    “You seem to have adjusted.”
    There was a clear note of sympathy in her voice, and I didn’t want it. “Not much future on a mining rock.” I’d learned to deal with the change from one kind of flotsam to another. And eventually, I’d found my dark tunnels, my little tastes of freedom. “It worked out okay. Things like your grasslands are a pretty nice payoff.”
    “Indeed.”
    It felt like something important had just happened, but I had no idea what, and I was done falling asleep on the job. “You have local briefing notes for me?”
    “Something like that.” My host cleared her throat and sipped from a water pack. “The short version of culture, whatever that may be, here on Bromelain III. Don’t stand on protocol overmuch, don’t assume we’re dumb farmers, and don’t mess with anyone’s water supplies. Manage all that, and you’ll be fine.”
    That was as short a list as I’d ever gotten. “Sounds like a pretty tolerant place.”
    “People are spread out here. We keep to ourselves unless we choose company. It helps to keep the peace.”
    That was going to throw a few wrinkles in my mission. I needed to observe my targets, and that was a lot