Aberrant

Chapter 17

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.