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

age.
    I’d campaigned hard to do this in the student lounge, which was a mess of gel-chairs, holo-covered walls, and excellent snacks, but I’d been overruled. Which sucked, because my stomach was kicking up a fuss about the lack of decent sustenance I’d sent its direction recently.
    The trainees were impressively still under my gaze. They were older than the last class I’d talked to—less wiggly, less wet behind the ears, and less obviously impressed by my presence in their midst. Good. Maybe their questions would be a little less awestruck, too. “Well, I could stand up here and say a bunch of stuff about Fixers and the important work we do, but I bet you’ve heard it all before.” And I’d probably find it hard to say with a straight face when my next assignment involved adjusting some guy’s hormones so that his dick pointed the right way.
    Hands shot up all over the room. I picked a waving one at random.
    The girl who stood up was as wide as she was tall, and every inch of it was clearly muscle. “Is being a Fixer dangerous?”
    She obviously hoped the answer was yes. “It can be, but danger takes a lot of different forms. And usually means we didn’t do our job right.” Or someone higher up the chain hadn’t, but thirteen-year-olds didn’t want to hear about bureaucratic fuck-ups.
    “I thought Fixers didn’t make mistakes.” A girl down in front looked fairly distressed about that possibility.
    I recognized her elfin looks—she came from one of the most overprotected families in the quadrant. Unfortunately, they also produced a lot of kids with Talent. “Everyone makes mistakes, and those of us with Talent sometimes make the biggest ones. That’s why it’s important to work on your judgment, too.”
    The elf frowned. “How do we do that?”
    In her family, I had no idea—probably by running away from home. “You make decisions every day, right?” In her case, not very big ones, but still. “You decide what to eat, what to wear, who to be nice to, who to share your lunch with.”
    She looked totally confused.
    This kid would last ten minutes on a mining rock, and someday she might get sent there. I sighed—I was a Fixer, not a nanny. “Basically, you practice. You notice when you make smart decisions and when you make dumb ones, and you try to get better.”
    Her eyes crossed. “But I thought we’re supposed to do what we’re told.”
    We were, and I’d just been reminded of that in no uncertain terms. “Absolutely. Fixer assignments are decided with great care and planning and access to a lot of information that we don’t have.” So far, I was spouting the company manual, but it was time to change that up a little. I glanced over at the wall where the teacher stood, looking a little bored. “But there are good reasons that KarmaCorp puts Fixers on the ground. We do what we’re told, but we have a lot of freedom to decide how we do it.” Something some of us took more advantage of than others.
    The teacher wasn’t looking bored anymore—but she hadn’t stopped me, either. And every pair of trainee eyes in the room was riveted.
    Which left me trying to explain a line I hadn’t remotely understood at thirteen. “Everything has resonance, energy—right? We have the Talent to tap into that energy, to shape it.” Thanks to a few Saskatchewan farmers with pretty interesting genetics that had been seeded out into space. “That can’t be done from an office. Energy needs to be felt , and every person in KarmaCorp knows it. That’s our job.”
    I could Sing however I wanted—so long as I got the job done. And complied with KarmaCorp’s very long ethics manual, but that was a different conversation, and one plenty of other people would be having with the trainees. I wasn’t here to tell them about the limits. I was here to tell them how to find enough freedom to stay sane—the wiggle room that had allowed a mining brat to do the job with dignity and pride. Elf girl was still