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

any kind of romantic sense, I don’t imagine that will change, and I’m not some feudal princess who can be ordered to marry a guy to save the empire.”
    There were worlds like that in the Federation, ones that pampered their royals thoroughly and gave them very little in the way of choices. That seemed at deep odds with what I saw when I looked out at the grasslands, though. This planet had been shaped by souls who knew freedom well.
    She shrugged and tossed her apple core into a patch of curly fronds. “Besides, I’m in no hurry to pair up with anyone. I have a good life and a busy one, and from what I can gather, men are a lot of work.”
    Amen to that. Her words rang true with my Talent, too—it wasn’t Devan in particular she objected to, but the plan to marry her off in general. Which raised an obvious question that I still didn’t have a satisfactory answer to. It was time to figure out more of why I’d really been sent to BroThree. “So there’s one thing I’m not at all clear on.”
    She glanced at me, amused. “Only one?”
    Smart and funny. “For the moment. Why are some people so determined that the two of you get hitched?” It was the politest way I could think of to ask why KarmaCorp was sticking their nose into the internal politics of some backwater planet. She wouldn’t know all the answers—but she likely knew more than I did.
    She snorted. “You should ask them.”
    I intended to. “You’re smart, you have your eyes open, and you’ve lived here your whole life. I’ve been here sixteen hours. Help me out.”
    “Only if you promise not to mess with my knickers.”
    That much I could promise—and only that much. “Done.”
    “How much do you know about colony planets?”
    Enough to know they all had a different story. “Assume I’m a dumb flatlander from one of the inner worlds.”
    She grinned. “They don’t call themselves dumb flatlanders.”
    Not usually. “I grew up on a digger rock.”
    “Huh.” Her head tilted to the side, thinking. “I don’t know much about mining asteroids—how do they get started?”
    A lot more simply than most colonies. “Some poor schmucks get shipped to a cold rock with a bunch of digging tools. The ones who figure out how to use the tools fastest usually end up in charge. If you’re lucky, they’re good people.”
    “Was your rock lucky?” Janelle stuck her hands in her pockets, voice carefully casual.
    I wondered what she’d heard. “Close enough.”
    “Good.” She nodded, back to watching her grasslands. It seemed like a fairly major occupation here. “It’s not all that different on a colony planet. A few extended families get shipped in to get things started.”
    That much they taught even in digger grade school. “The Founders.” Seeds of a new society.
    “Yeah.” She shrugged. “If you’re lucky, they’re good people.”
    Ah. “Things got sticky here?”
    “A nasty virus cropped up, killed a quarter of the colonists before the medicals found a cure.” Her lips pursed. “And a couple of families on the rampage killed another quarter before they got stopped.”
    The fear of imminent death on a lonely rock didn’t bring out the best in everyone. “What happened?”
    “My grandfather led the colonists who stopped the rampage. He was also the guy who found the cure—he was just a tech, but the virus had wiped out most of the medical team.”
    That was the kind of thing that would inspire some pretty solid loyalty. “Interesting blood running in your veins.” She hadn’t been picked at random for this marriage deal.
    She smiled wryly. “It gets more interesting. My grandfather convinced my grandmother to run off with him to settle here. Her father was Jackson Douglas’s youngest brother.”
    The Saskatchewan farming clan that had explored and mapped half the quadrant. Galactic royalty, and another reason the power structure on this planet was a lot less straightforward than it seemed. I looked over at Janelle,