Grower's Omen (The Fixers, book #2: A KarmaCorp Novel) by Audrey Faye

to run an air-intake valve. “If you’ve got time, I’d appreciate an extra pair of hands. Especially if you’re up for what will probably be a lot of boring staring at readouts.”
    “Beats running inventory, which is what I have to go do if you kick me out.” Toli was already digging into her box, hooking up connectors and valves and tablet interfaces. “I assume you want this set up for immediate read-out?”
    She obviously knew more than intake valves, and I was happy to save anyone from inventory duty. “That would be great—here, I’ll patch you in to my tablet.”
    She rolled her eyes. “That would break at least fifteen rules before we even get started. I’ll send the data to mine, and then I can get you a copy of whatever you need later.”
    That seemed like it should break fifteen rules too, but I didn’t comment. I knew how bureaucracies worked, and how pragmatic managers got around them. “I’ll run a basic pheromone sampling first, but I don’t expect it to show much. Just looking for a baseline.”
    “Sure. Continuous collection or point data?”
    I might as well use her to full advantage. “Can you tweak it to run both?”
    Toli’s eyes gleamed. “Oh, yeah.”
    I adjusted my plans for the morning. She could more than handle the straight-up science, which would leave me free to do the kinds of scans that involved Talent. I wandered the central pathways of dome Alpha, touching my hands to various bits of foliage as I went. Noticing details that looked different by day than they had by night.
    I could feel Toli’s eyes on my back. “What are you up to—Grower stuff?”
    Curiosity, but with the polite offer of a brush-off if I wanted it. Which struck me as off, somehow. Someone with Toli’s personality would have her nose in everything with even the slightest invitation.
    Clearly those were scarce in these parts.
    Poor tribal soil. I kept circling back to that, even though it wasn’t what I’d been sent here to fix. “Yeah. I’m getting a baseline read right now, just like I’ll have you do once you’ve got the gear set up. Then we’ll stir things up a little and see what happens on both your measurements and mine.”
    She chuckled. “Does Jerome know that you intend to wreak havoc with his babies?”
    Interesting choice of words. “It shouldn’t interfere with any of his work.” Not unless one of the plants here was the guilty party, anyhow, and that would rapidly make it my work.
    “That won’t make him any less displeased when he finds out what you’ve done.” Toli suddenly sounded serious.
    “Fixers don’t ask for permission.” I glanced her way and offered an exit door if she wanted one. “I’m happy to run the equipment if you need to go take care of your inventory.”
    She snorted. “You calling me a coward?”
    “No.” I could feel my lips twitching—it was going to be very tempting to take her home at the end of this. “Just making sure you know what you signed up for.”
    “I’m a lab manager,” she said dryly. “If something hasn’t exploded before noon, it’s been a really boring day.”
    She likely meant that literally—explosions were a fairly unavoidable consequence when you mixed beakers, fire, and scientists who didn’t think things all the way through before sticking the first two in the vicinity of each other. “I blew up my first test tube when I was five.”
    “I was eight.” She tapped the equipment on the stones in front of her, indicating it was ready to go. “But I blew up four at the same time. Distilled pure alcohol by accident—I was trying to make fuel for my brother’s rocket.”
    I nodded that she should take her baseline readings, and took my hands off the plants while she did so. I was pretty sure nothing in here was wildly Talent sensitive, but I was scientist enough to value clean data where I could get it—and team members who could make a good rocket fuel. “The schools on Stardust Prime issue the chemistry teachers