Nimbus

by Jacey Bedford

  *I hope Garrick’s not being too clever for his own good,* she said. *When you find a reptan under a rock, it’s better not to poke it with a sharp stick.*

  *When Garrick decides to do something about Roxburgh, I’m pretty sure it will be sudden, swift, and conclusive.*

  *What if Roxburgh does something about Garrick first?*

  *Yes. I’d thought of that. Garrick has a lot on his mind. He might have taken his eye off that particular ball.*

  After Cara had signed off, that thought echoed around Ben’s brain for the rest of the day.

  At 1700 station time, he headed hubward to where Captain Arran Syke, formerly captain of Mother Ramona’s private guard, now head of Crossways Militia, had his office. Close to the Mansion House, this was, in all but name, the central police station for Crossways. There were five smaller offices spread about the station plus an eighth office on the Saturn Ring, now separate.

  Three young men, dressed in buddysuits marked with a shoulder flash which represented the scales of justice, chatted in a corner. A woman stood before a holographic screen, arranging images, mostly mugshots. The desk sergeant in the outer office looked up as he entered, recognized him, and smiled.

  “Come to see Captain Syke, sir?” She inclined her head toward his office door, which stood slightly ajar.

  “Yes.” He searched his memory for her name. “Heator, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “You’ve made sergeant?”

  “Yes.” She grinned at him. “Got my stripes a month ago.”

  “Well done, Sergeant.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Commander Benjamin.” Syke opened his door. “I thought I heard your voice. You three . . .” He glowered at the young men. “If you can’t find something to do, I’ll assign you to guard duty at the public docks.”

  The three idlers jumped up immediately and separated to their individual desks.

  “Sorry, Commander Benjamin, come right in.”

  No matter how many times Ben circumvented formality, Syke remained proper to the point of stiffness. Ben had lost the title of commander when he deserted the Trust, but it had stuck anyway. His own people at the Free Company usually addressed him by name, or called him boss, but Syke championed etiquette with the zeal of the newly converted. Ben was bound, therefore, to address him as Captain Syke.

  That was all right. He could ignore the idiosyncrasies because Syke was conscientious and diligent. Unfortunately, he wasn’t a trained police officer. His new role as head of the militia had evolved over the past year. Now, instead of having a unit of fifty, his staff had grown exponentially. The job was getting away from him. Crossways was a big place to police, and the population was law-averse. A significant number of inhabitants were on Crossways to avoid the attention of the Monitors.

  Garrick’s directive was to ignore the petty criminals, for now, and to target the ones who were causing real harm, both on-station and off. In the last month alone, Syke had shut down two piracy operations and ended a very nasty kidnapping with the victim still alive, though missing three fingers. None of the kidnappers had survived the smackdown.

  That was one way of avoiding an expensive court case, though not necessarily one Ben liked. There was enough of his Monitor training left in him to still believe everyone deserved a fair trial, however guilty they appeared to be.

  He accepted the offer of tea, brought in by one of the young men.

  “What can I do for you, Commander?”

  “I wanted to congratulate you on solving the kidnap case. It’s rare to rescue the victim alive after more than three days.”

  “We got lucky—an informer—otherwise . . .”

  “I’d like to offer my help.”

  “Your Monitor experience?”

  “Not particularly, no, though there’s a retired officer I know of who practically wrote the book on criminology and social theory in closed habitats. In fact, she wrote several books and taught classes. She lives alone, no family, and might well be interested in a consultancy on Crossways. I imagine she could get a good book out of it, and her expertise would be invaluable.”

  Ben held his breath, wondering whether he should have made that suggestion in advance of the next one he was about to make.

  “Thank you.” Syke looked thoughtful. “You came all this way to recommend a consultant?”

  “Not exactly. I’m setting up a new training program for the Free Company. Morton Tengue is supervising. His crew is sharp—sharper than mine when it comes to the physical stuff. I want to give my guys an edge.”

  “You’re expecting more trouble?”

  “Always. Though I live in hopes of being disappointed.”

  Syke laughed at that. “I know what you mean.”

  “I came to offer you the option of sending some of your officers to train with us.”

  “You think we need sharpening up, as well as hiring in a consultant?”

  “No offense, Captain. You don’t have an easy job here, and good as you are, you’ve had to take on new officers and put them in the field with little training. Garrick’s trying to bring law to the lawless, and I’m sure as hell glad I’m not in your shoes right now.”

  “So you’re only offering combat training?”

  Ben nodded. “Generally, yes, but specifically, I’m offering to train the detail that you set aside to protect Garrick and Mother Ramona. If something happens to them, this station slips into chaos. Tengue’s mercs have many skills. They are particularly effective bodyguards. Garrick had a set-to with Roxburgh recently—”

  “Another?”

  “I don’t trust Roxburgh—particularly where Garrick’s concerned, and prevention, in this case, is certainly better than the alternative.”

  Syke nodded. “Happy to accept your offer, Commander. When do you propose to start?”

  Ben relaxed. He’d worried Syke would take offense.

  “Pick your men. Twenty initially. We’ll fix up a time and meet in the training gym in Blue Seven.”

  Chapter Eight

  SIEGE

  SOMEONE WAS COMING. A RIPPLE RAN through the assembling crowd. Cara felt their expectation and their faith in their mayor as if they were shouting it from the treetops.

  She heard the woman before she saw her.

  “Jordan, you and Ives take six men and watch the north gate. Emma, plasma rifle, second-story window. Treat it gentle. Don’t go popping off for no reason, but if you need to use it, make it count. Arlette, Jonno, Dow, Walters, up on the rooftops. Make sure you’ve plenty of bolts.” A short, slender woman, possibly fiftyish, strode through the crowd snapping out orders. She wore a slouch hat pulled down low over her forehead and an assemblage of clothing layers indistinguishable from any of the other inhabitants. In one hand she carried a crossbow, in the other a coffee cup. Cara liked a woman who got her priorities right.

  “Are you the folks who brought trouble to our door?”

  Her lack of height didn’t diminish her obvious authority.

  “What should we have done?” Cara asked. “Didn’t fancy hanging around to meet those guys on their own ground.”

  The woman grunted, handed her coffee to the gate boy, and cocked her crossbow with a lever. It took strength to make it look that easy. Then she waggled her fingers in a give-me gesture, and the kid handed back the coffee cup. She took a sip.

  “You can let your cresties go, they won’t go far. What’s your business in Wonnick?”

  “Looking for an old friend.” Jussaro pulled the scarf from his face and grinned. “Guess we came to the right place.”

  “Emil Jussaro! Son of a—”

  “Hello, Zandra.”

  Cara took another look at the town mayor. Now she had the opportunity to study her up close, Zandra Hartwell was probably closer to sixty. The ramrod-straight po
sture belonged to a younger woman, but the tightly scraped-back gray hair—what could be seen of it under her hat—and the fine mesh of lines around her eyes gave her away.

  “What in all seven hells are you doing here?” Hartwell said.

  “I just said.” Jussaro grinned at her.

  “If that old friend is me, you should have saved yourself the effort.”

  “You need to hear what I have to say.”

  “After I’ve dealt with them.” She jerked her head toward the gate, which was now closed. A pair of stout bars reinforced it from the inside.

  “I didn’t think they’d follow us right to town,” Cara said. “Are they dangerous?”

  “We trade sometimes. Mostly we don’t bother them and they don’t bother us, unless there’s something they want without paying for it. Something you two aren’t telling me?”

  “We spotted them about fifty klicks out, but I suppose it’s possible they’ve been tracking us since we crossed the border.”

  “Hmm, could be. We don’t see too many tourists, but the ones who do come often smuggle in weapons that are hard to come by this side of the Ditch. Are you carrying?”

  Jussaro shook his head. “You know me and weapons. We don’t get on.”

  Cara patted her side. “I’m carrying for both of us—a derri and an ossio pulse pistol.”

  “Can you use them?”

  “If I have to.”

  Hartwell shrugged.

  “I don’t recall you ever showed a liking for firearms,” Jussaro said.

  “People change. This place makes you change. It’s a hardscrabble life here. Some of us choose one way, some another.” She nodded to the kid who’d been on the gate. “Open the slider, let’s see what they want.”

  He opened a head-height panel that gave a letterbox window onto the world outside.

  The dust cloud resolved itself as the gang approached. In the center was a team of six crestedinas harnessed in pairs to an antigrav sled. A dozen mounted men flanked the sled, all dressed in local style, their heads swathed and faces masked against the dust. The sled wasn’t a sled at all, but a bastardized armored groundcar with the top sliced off. How had that crossed the Ditch? It was painted blood-red and decorated with bones. The woman who drove it rose from the cockpit and leaned across the top of the front roll bar, her bare arms corded with muscle and burned brown by sun and wind.

  Hartwell planted her feet slightly apart and held her crossbow in plain sight. “State your business.”

  “We’re here for a neighborly visit. No need to get spiky.” She looked up to the first-floor window. “That you up there, Emma Swithington? Put the rifle down. I can see the muzzle from here. It’s a Tesla 120. You might take one of us, or even two, but not before I’d cut through the gate with this.” She patted the plasma gun at her side, still holstered. “And my boys have you in their sights. Nice try, but not today.”

  “Stay where you are, Emma,” Hartwell called, “but take a step back. I asked what you want, Lizzie Rhodes.”

  “Travelers crossed my patch without paying tolls.”

  “I know what your tolls are like. One hundred percent of everything they own is a touch excessive. We found the last traveler you caught up with. Leaving him without clothing and water in the dry season was a death sentence. You went too far. Besides, these are under my protection. Old friends.”

  She scowled sideways at Jussaro and lowered her voice. “Who is your friend, anyway?” She jerked her head at Cara.

  “Someone I would have sent your way a couple of years ago,” Jussaro said. “But you’d gone to ground.”

  Hartwell put a finger on the center of her forehead where it was likely her small implant scar rested. She raised one eyebrow. Cara placed a finger on her own implant scar, a tiny knot, and nodded.

  “All right.” Hartwell acknowledged the nod. She turned to the gate and shouted, “We don’t want any trouble. I’m sorry for your inconvenience. Go home.”

  “It ain’t no inconvenience. We’ll catch ’em on the way back if you ain’t going to send ’em out.”

  “She’s right about that,” Hartwell said. “The minute you step outside these gates she’s going to be on your trail. Trouble follows that one like a long shadow. We can’t stop her and her boys from roaming the Big Dusty, and like them or not, they’re our neighbors. We don’t pay them off, though. It gives ’em big ideas.”

  “We have a way out,” Cara said. “A safe way out for two of us, or possibly more.”

  “Is that an invitation?”

  “It could be,” Jussaro said.

  “I’ve done enough jumping around the galaxy. I’ve found a place here where I’m needed.”

  “Should I ask how you’ve been?” Jussaro said.

  “No need. You can guess. Step under the porch, here. It’s a touch more private.” She stepped up into the shade of an overhanging front porch and glared at the nearest of the townsfolk. “Private, I said.” She watched them slink off out of earshot. “I’ve been busy staying one jump ahead of the megacorps—sometimes only half a jump. I lost Bronnie on Logan’s World. She went down fighting.”

  “I’m sorry. I know Bronnie was—”

  “She was everything.” Hartwell held up her hand to chop off that line of talk. “I heard you’d lost your implant.”

  “I did.”

  “Yet here you are.”

  “Someone had a dirty job that needed doing. It suited them to give me a second chance.”

  “So you traded with the establishment.”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “It came with a price.”

  “You paid it.”

  “Not like they expected. It’s a long story.”

  “I’ve got time.”

  Cara watched Hartwell’s face while Jussaro told how Crowder had set him to spy on them for the Trust, and how he’d managed to twist the situation his own way. She’d not asked him to tell her mind-to-mind, which was one way of making sure he was telling the truth. Lying by Telepathy was damned difficult, even for someone with Jussaro’s level of skill. No, it was obvious Hartwell trusted Jussaro’s word. Cara wondered if theirs had been a simple working relationship or if there had been more to it.

  Gods! She missed Ben.

  “So Emil found you on Mirimmar-14.” Hartwell turned to Cara.

  “I like to think I found him.”

  “She was powered down—on the run from Alphacorp,” Jussaro said.

  “I was looking for Sanctuary. I found something else. I’m part of the Free Company now. We’re independent. Over two hundred psi-techs.”

  Hartwell turned to Jussaro. “Looks like you can build Sanctuary right there.”

  “Not like the old days. You took them in, gave them new IDs, a quick lesson in camouflage, and sent them off to who knows where. Only you had the key to the whole network.”

  “And the Monitors nearly busted me for it. Bronnie, Elf, and I slipped out minutes ahead of a raid that took thirty of our people and turned them into morons. Blasted their implants so badly they barely had two brain cells to rub together. You should know. You got caught in the backlash.”

  “I don’t blame you for that.”

  “I blamed me. I left the Sanctuary business for good. After Bronnie died, Elf gave up. Breathed vacuum somewhere on the run from Kokassec to Leira. No one saw her go. I traveled on my own for a bit, ended up here. This side of the Ditch there’s no law to speak of. No one to turn me in.”

  “We have a situation,” Cara said. “Two hundred psi-techs who are forced to wear dampers because the Trust has started to send a mindbender to cull them one at a time. We need Sanctuary, again, Zandra.”

  “You won’t find it here. I’ve got my own to protect, see . . .” *Jonti.*

  One of the men who’d ro
unded up the loose crestedinas turned. *Yes, Ma?*

  He was younger than Cara expected, maybe fifteen or sixteen at most.

  “You have a son?” Jussaro asked.

  “I kept him hidden, even from you. Sent for him after I settled here. He likes it. He’s made friends.”

  *Come here and meet Emil Jussaro. You’ve heard me talk about him.*

  The boy came over, a cautious smile on his face.

  “Don’t worry, Emil, he’s not yours.”

  That much was obvious from the boy’s skin. Beneath the tan he was Caucasian, and the hair that peeped out from his head-covering was straw-fair.

  *Hello, Mr. Jussaro. Ma has told me about you. I thought you’d be . . . *

  *Taller?* Jussaro’s laugh was like a bark. *I just talk that way.*

  Cara was trying to pin something down. *You don’t have an implant,* she blurted to the boy.

  Hartwell gave her a sideways look. “You’re good, lady. No, he doesn’t have an implant. I’ve been training him since he was a baby, since before he was born, in fact. External influences and environmental factors can affect an embryo in utero. We’ve known that for years. Those of us who have implants have them because we already have an underlying natural talent. Enhance that talent with an implant, and it not only changes us, but it affects our offspring.” She looked smug. “The megacorporations take advantage of that. They recruit the children of their psi-techs because they already have a predisposition toward psionics, but once they’re implanted, it masks any natural talent. None of us knows what talent we would have had if it had been nurtured from birth instead of subsumed into an implant. Jonti’s a natural.”

  “What’s his range?” Cara asked.

  “If we were going on the old psi-tech scoring system, he’d be a class three.”

  “Impressive.”

  *I am here, you know.* Jonti scowled.

  *Sorry, love,* his mother said.

  “My apologies, Mr. Hartwell,” Cara said. “Have you ever thought about getting an implant? If you can throw a thought over a hundred klicks without one, then with one, you’d be able to throw a thought across the galaxy.”

  “We’ve discussed it.” Jonti looked to his mother, as if for approval. “I don’t know anyone on the other side of the galaxy, and having that kind of talent makes me a commodity for the megacorporations to bicker over. I’d rather run my own life.”