Nimbus

by Jacey Bedford

  *That’s the idea. Can we borrow Jake and the Bellatkin?*

  *He’s gone to Butterstone to pick up a consignment of spelt flour for Ada Levenson, but you can borrow him when he gets back. Four days at most. How long before you’re home?*

  *We can get a freighter outbound to Cotille. Journey time, two days.*

  *I’ll come and pick you up there.*

  *Do you have the time?*

  *It’s been a month. I have a hard-on just thinking about you coming home. I’ll make time.*

  She giggled. *You know what Jussaro will say.*

  *Get a room!* they both said together.

  *Anything I should know?* Cara asked.

  *Not since Jon Moon.*

  *Is he all right now?*

  *Ronan says so, but they’re both jumpy as hell.*

  *I’m not surprised.*

  *Close call.*

  *We’re on the clock, aren’t we?* Cara asked. *The longer it takes us to find Hartwell, the more likely it is that someone else will slip up. It’s Crowder, isn’t it?*

  *Without evidence to the contrary, that would be my best guess.*

  Cara let out a string of obscenities that were no less effective for being purely mind-to-mind. *Maybe there’s a way to lure the attacker to me,* she said. *I’m probably the only one who could follow the link to its source. Maybe I could—*

  *No, you’d have to meld with the person being attacked—even presuming we knew who was next. If you weren’t fast enough, or if you tried and failed, the consequences could be fatal to both of you.*

  *Yeah. I get it, but it’s hard to sit by and—*

  *You’re not sitting by. Find Hartwell. See if there are unlock codes that will free the implants.*

  Ben signed off with, *Love you. See you soon,* and Cara replied with something warm and fuzzy, not unlike a kiss.

  Two days later, as promised, Ben was waiting as she walked down the freighter ramp in the commercial dock to the east of Cymbalom, Cotille Colony’s capital city. Instead of her usual buddysuit, she’d dressed to blend in, wearing layers of impractical, but decidedly fetching, skirts and a form-fitting top. Cara began to run as she saw him, past the cargomeister and his antigrav cart, skirts flying. She flung herself at Ben and wrapped her legs around the leathery hide of his buddysuit.

  “Get a room, Carlinni,” Jussaro said as he sauntered past.

  Ben and Cara surfaced for air from their kiss, to laugh at Jussaro’s retreating back.

  “Was he sniggering?” Cara asked.

  “I don’t care.” Ben kissed her again and set Cara’s feet gently on the dock. “Since we have a perfectly good room waiting for us on Crossways, I suppose we should go. Jussaro’s already halfway to Solar Wind. If we give him enough of a head start, he’ll be trying to persuade Yan Gwenn to raise the ramp to embarrass us.”

  “Yan knows better than to try,” Cara said. “Are you ready to go now? Did you have any business with President Lake?”

  “I arrived early and delivered a neatly unobtrusive package of platinum wrapped with gracious and diplomatic words. Both the platinum and the words supplied by Norton Garrick. We arranged for Anstruther and Daughters to take another consignment of bots for repair and to supply us with some of the machine tools and cutters that we need to reestablish a bot repair shop on Crossways.”

  “So that was your reason for being so eager to meet me here.”

  He put one arm around her shoulder and hugged her. “You know it wasn’t. Let’s get your bag out of the hold and be on our way.”

  Much as he would have liked to take Cara straight to their cabin, Ben followed her up the access tube to Solar Wind’s flight deck. She looked out of place in her calf-length layered skirts.

  She slid straight into the comms station as if she’d never been away. Ben let his gaze linger on her a moment longer than was necessary. The colors suited her, a riot of blues and greens. He was so unused to seeing her in a skirt. He had a sudden vision of it lying in folds on the floor and Cara stepping naked out of it.

  Damn, that would have to wait. He needed all his concentration to get them safely through the Folds. He was always on edge, always expecting the worst. The worst was not the void dragon. That was strange enough, and unsettling. The worst was the Nimbus.

  Ben blinked slowly, settling his pre-flight nerves. He had the usual belly full of butterflies at the thought of what waited in the Folds. Even veterans of foldspace cracked sometimes.

  Been there. Done that.

  Recovered.

  Or maybe: still recovering.

  Flying the Folds engendered equal amounts of fear and exhilaration. There were things in the liminal space between realities that defied explanation. He’d seen them and survived to tell the tale.

  He shoved that thought behind him and mentally connected with the ship’s systems. Safely away from Cotille, Ben brought the jump drive online and, with a rush, they entered foldspace.

  • • •

  The flight deck lights dip, flicker, and then resume normality. That’s not always the case in foldspace. You can never tell in advance what it’s going to be like. Sometimes it’s pitch-dark, other times there’s a strange phenomenon which shows everything up as a visual negative, either in shades of gray, or—more disconcertingly—in full color.

  Ben wonders whether they’ll get a visitation on this trip, but Yan Gwenn marks elapsed time in fifteen-second bursts and nothing untoward happens. A good passage, then.

  Ben finds the line to Olyanda space. With a ping he doesn’t quite hear, they emerge into realspace again a hundred klicks out from Crossways, spot on target. He smiles.

  • • •

  The first time Ben saw Crossways, a vast man-made habitat hanging in space, it looked as if it had been cobbled together by a lunatic using parts from several mismatched giant construction kits. Its solid central spindle supported a core of concentric rings resembling a child’s spinning top. From that, it had sprouted additions and extensions—excrescences which had expanded organically in a way which owed little to long-term planning and much to necessity.

  The recent bombardment had scarred and reshaped the station.

  Now in orbit above Olyanda, Crossways was protected not only by the planetary defense grid, but also by its own fleet and armaments. Attacking Crossways had cost the megacorps dearly. They wouldn’t try again—at least not until they’d finished licking their wounds.

  Ben docked Solar Wind in Port 22, Garrick and Mother Ramona’s private dock. Gwala and Hilde, their bodyguards, were there to meet them. They made their way to Blue Seven in one of the garish tub cabs that buzzed around the station’s traffic system like part of a demented fairground ride.

  Jussaro excused himself and headed toward his office. Ben would have hustled Cara through Blue Seven and straight into their apartment if he could, but she’d been away a long time and couldn’t avoid friends and well-wishers even if she’d wanted to. Ben let them get on with it. It felt like an age before he got Cara alone in their apartment with the door safely locked.

  “How long before Jake gets back with the Bellatkin?” she asked.

  “Two days.”

  She grinned at him. “I hope you weren’t planning on being too busy.”

  “Funny you should say that—I cleared my schedule.”

  No one disturbed them for the rest of the day and for one glorious night, but Ben should have known that only a miracle would have given him two whole days off. He tried not to disturb Cara as he slid out of bed the following morning, but she raised herself up on one elbow and blinked at him.

  “Go back to sleep,” he told her, planting a kiss on her disheveled hair.

  “Whassup?”

  “Wenna beeped me. Saedi Sugrue’s calling me in ten minutes.”

  “I must have been sound asleep. I never herd the bee
p. Saedi wouldn’t be calling about something routine. She should be wearing her damping pin and keeping her head down.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  “I’m awake now, anyway.” Cara swung her legs out of bed, picked up the skirt they’d discarded on the floor and draped it over a chair. Her buddysuit hung in the wardrobe. “I’ve missed this,” she said, drawing on the softsuit liner and shrugging into the trousers.

  “I liked the skirt, especially when it fell around your ankles.”

  She thumped his arm gently, trying to hide a smile.

  “You can’t pull it off.”

  “What? The skirt?”

  “Looking serious after a night of blistering sex.”

  They walked over to the office together. Wenna was already there.

  “Sorry to disturb you both, but this sounded urgent. Saedi didn’t want to hang around waiting for you to wake up.”

  “She could have woken me.”

  “That’s what I told her.”

  Ben felt Saedi’s mental handshake, implant to implant.

  *What’s wrong, Saedi?*

  *Kayla Mundi. We found her dead this morning. No sign of external trauma, but she looked as though she died pretty hard. She’d bitten through her own tongue and almost clawed the skin off her forehead.*

  *Was she wearing her damper?*

  *We found it on the floor under her bed.*

  *You’ll have to get—*

  *Mel Hoffner to do an autopsy. I know. Mel’s here now, and Gupta.*

  *Don’t risk yourselves more than you have already,* Ben said. *Fix your damper again. I’ll come myself.*

  *Signing off.*

  Ben looked at Cara. She had no trouble with a serious face now. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “Hell, no, of course not. As soon as Jake gets back with the Bellatkin, Jussaro and I will be off to Dounreay. It’s our last chance to find Hartwell.”

  “Good luck.”

  Chapter Four

  DOUNREAY

  DOUNREAY WAS A BASTARD OF A WORLD. IT had sounded dismal from the description and Cara liked it no better now she was slogging across its vast northern continent toward a small settlement called Wonnick. Her mount, a lumbering crestedina, a saurian riding beast twice her height at the shoulder, rumbled and grumbled quietly to itself as it plodded across the endless baked mud, head low and crest undulating.

  She reached down and patted its thick hide. It was time to give the beasts a short break and some protein.

  She glanced at her companion.

  Jussaro surreptitiously shuffled to ease his backside in the saddle. He returned her look, his eyebrows raised in a question. That always looked slightly strange on Jussaro because he had a huge brow ridge to shade his eyes with their nictitating third eyelids.

  *What?* He asked her mind-to-mind since his mouth and nose, like hers, were swathed in a scarf to keep out the blowing dust.

  *Your friend has a knack for picking particularly lovely planets. I have grit in places I barely knew existed.*

  He shrugged. *She’s been in hiding for six years, one step ahead of the megacorporations. I guess she’s run out of pretty places.*

  *I thought Vortigern was bad enough with its heat and humidity . . .* Cara pulled a face. *And the leeches. I hate leeches, especially ones the size of my fist.*

  *You’re not wishing we were still on Vortigern.*

  *Not exactly. I’d like a nice temperate planet with modest precipitation and green foliage. I’d settle for a comfortable hotel with clean sheets on the bed, running water in the washroom, and a competent chef in the kitchen.*

  She leaned back and the crestie obligingly slowed and stopped, giving her the opportunity to grasp the balance strap and slither the three meters to the ground. Jussaro pulled up his beast alongside and, with a groan, did the same.

  Cara’s crestie snorted through its nostril flaps and took the opportunity to lower its head to whiffle its prehensile lips for sand-spiders, crest now resting flat against its neck.

  “You’ll be lucky.” The scarf muffled her words, but the big saurian raised its head and rippled its crest hopefully.

  “Okay, big guy, lunch.”

  She released the pulley strap and let down one of the packs secured to the saddle. Inside, there was a selection of small cloth sacks.

  *Make sure you get them the right way around,* Jussaro said.

  She curled up her nose. The beasts’ food, shiny brown-and-black husks of dried mixed insects, almost looked more appetizing than the pouches of osteena pulp that were all they had to last them until Wonnick, where, no doubt, they could get dried osteena, osteena pottage, osteena juice, and if they were very lucky, pickled or roasted osteena. Somewhere around the third day on this planet, she’d begun to dream of field ration packs and Ada Levenson’s bland coffee. She’d even be prepared to try the Don’t Ask: the stew with no definable ingredients, except for genuine vitamin supplements, that Dido Kennedy served up to all the feral kids she’d unofficially adopted in Red One.

  Cara scattered a double handful of insect mix on the ground for each of the cresties. While she waited for them to chase down every last morsel, she popped a pouch, sucking the wet osteena, now reduced to baby-food consistency.

  She never thought she’d miss Crossways, never thought she could make her home on a chunk of metal and ceramic spinning in space. It was the people not the place, she told herself. One person, in particular.

  The brief break with Ben had been spectacular, but it had been weeks ago.

  She mentally inserted his lean brown body between the clean sheets on the bed in the comfortable hotel with running water in the washrooms and a competent chef in the kitchen.

  Perfect.

  Instead, she had one more day of travel across the baked mud flats to look forward to, with only Jussaro’s company. She liked the guy, but he wasn’t Ben.

  She saw Jussaro smirk and checked her shields, hoping she hadn’t broadcast that thought inadvertently. Her shields were good, but Jussaro’s mental skills were off the scale. He’d been training psi-techs while she’d still been chasing her first promotion, in her Alphacorp days. He’d not only been training them, but encouraging them toward independence; pointing out ways they could take the first steps toward Sanctuary should they ever need to bail on their megacorp contract. It was an activity that earned him two bouts of Neural Readjustment before they finally nixed his implant completely.

  The megacorps had shattered Sanctuary. Zandra Hartwell had escaped, others had gone to ground, but many died. Cara fervently hoped Hartwell was still alive and still in possession of the unlock codes for the Trust’s implants. They needed Hartwell right now. Every day that passed increased the likelihood that someone would get careless and another psi-tech would fall to the Trust’s killer Telepath.

  Cara looked about her. This part of the planet—the equatorial band—had only two seasons: hot and dry, and hot and wet, following each other in cycles close to two Earth months long. Cara and Jussaro had been here since the end of the last wet season when lush vegetation had waved shoulder-high and the harvest, a three-day frenzy, had occupied every man, woman, and child old enough to gather the spongy osteena. The ubiquitous native fruit resembled a squash and held moisture and sustenance—enough to live on if you had to—but it tasted like mud. Everything on this world tasted like mud.

  *What’s that?*

  Cara looked around at Jussaro’s sharp question. A shimmer of dark cloud, barely a suggestion of something approaching, hung on the distant horizon. In the clear violet sky, it was as good as a giant red flashing light. Cara’s first thought was rain, but they were less than eight days into the dry season, long enough for all the wet season’s rains to soak in, run off, or evaporate to a distant memory.

  *It’s either a skimmer, in which case it’s the law and we�
��re screwed, or it’s a Lifer band, in which case we’re screwed unless we can outrun them.*

  Jussaro’s thought translated into something close to: *Shit!*

  *Yeah, right. Let’s go. Whichever one it is, hanging around here will get us into a heap of trouble.*

  Lifers were the remnants of Dounreay’s troubled past as a prison colony, descendants of those individuals who had not accepted the amnesty when the planet’s status had been changed, fifty years after the last offenders had been dumped to live or die by their wits. They were the children and grandchildren of the original inmates serving life sentences. The Lifer bands embraced their heritage and continued to live by their wits. They were the main reason that neither private skimmers nor airborne craft were allowed west of the GID, the Great Irrigation Duct. The authorities figured that if anyone took mechanized transport into the waste, the Lifer gangs would soon acquire it, and then they would encroach into the more civilized areas of the continent.

  Anyone living out here, including the Lifer gangs, relied on crestedinas. Hence Cara and Jussaro’s choice of transport. She was beginning to regret trying to blend in with the locals, even though they didn’t have much choice. Landing a spaceship would have been a bit obvious, but so much easier.

  *We might have a situation developing down here.* Cara tapped her crestie behind its left foreleg while opening up a communication to the Bellatkin, skulking beyond Dounreay’s moon where the planetary defense systems wouldn’t pick up traces of the craft.

  Her crestie obligingly braced its leg in a forward position and curved its head around toward her, flattening its crest against its neck. Tucking up her skirt—another disadvantage of trying to look like a local—she grabbed on to the balance strap dangling from the saddle, put her left foot on the crestie’s outstretched leg, gripped the top of its neck and sprang for the mounting rung. She threw her right leg across the saddle and pulled herself upright, tugging the skirt out of the way.

  Jussaro, wearing a shorter tunic and trousers, wasn’t quite as hampered. He settled into his own saddle and shortened the balance strap. *Let’s go, Carlinni. What’s keeping you?*