Nimbus

by Jacey Bedford

  She leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the lips. “Can you feel that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “Do it again.”

  She did. This time he responded.

  “Get a room, you two,” Ronan said from somewhere out of Ben’s line of vision.

  “I thought we had,” Ben said. “Did you knock before entering?”

  “I didn’t need to. This is my domain.”

  “I suppose it is.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I don’t know. Numb. Groggy. What happened?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  Ben closed his eyes and drew his eyebrows together in a frown. “Something happened at the gym. There was a training session. . . .”

  “You almost got taken out by an assassin with an ossio knife doused in neurotoxin. Luckily for you, Max grabbed the knife, and we figured out what the toxin was and gave you the antidote before your brain checked out and shut down your vital organs.”

  “Max? I owe my life to Max?” Ben groaned. “He’s not going to let me forget it, is he?”

  “I doubt it.” Ronan grinned. “He says he’s already ordered the I-saved-Ben-Benjamin T-shirt.”

  “It could be worse,” Cara said. “At least it wasn’t Ada Levenson.”

  “When can I get out of here?” Ben said.

  “Don’t be in such a hurry. There are tests. You knew there’d be tests, didn’t you? We don’t even know if you can walk yet, though you can obviously talk. A couple of days if everything is all right.”

  “Two days?”

  “If you cooperate.”

  Ben sighed. “I always cooperate.”

  “Yeah, right!” Cara pushed back her chair. “Well, if you’re going to be busy cooperating, I’m going to go and have a shower. I still have grit from Dounreay lodged in places where grit shouldn’t be. I’ll see you later.”

  Chapter Twelve

  TOGETHER

  CARA LEFT THE INFIRMARY, TRYING TO HIDE the trembling in her knees and the tears prickling her eyes. Something must have shown on her face, though, because none of the people she passed on her way to their apartment tried to stop her to ask questions. She closed the door and leaned against it, smothering a great gulping sob. He was alive, and if he was alive, he was going to be all right.

  She stripped off her clothes and went to stand in the shower for much longer than the regulation four minutes, letting her tears flow until she was all cried out.

  It wasn’t quite two days later when Ronan pronounced Ben fit and told him to get out of the infirmary while Ronan still had a shred of sanity left. “I’m not saying he’s a bad patient,” Ronan said to Cara as they waited for Ben to dress, “but if ever there was a case for running before you can walk, Ben personifies it. But please try to make him take it easy for a few days. Two days of bed rest, preferably.”

  “Is that doctor’s orders for two days of wild sex?” Ben came out of his room dressed in the singlet and soft trousers he’d been wearing when he was brought in.

  “I was thinking of two days of you staring at the ceiling. At most, I recommend a little gentle snuggling, though if you can manage a two-day marathon in your condition, good luck to you.” Ronan mock-fanned his face with his fingertips. “But please remember to shield.”

  Cara gave him a wide-eyed look. “We always shield when—”

  “You think so? Huh?”

  She turned to give him a mouthful of good-natured abuse, but Ben leaned across and kissed her. *He’s teasing.*

  *I know—only he’s pretty perceptive, and wouldn’t it be awful if we shared—*

  *We don’t. We won’t. I’m not sharing any part of you.*

  They walked the fifty meters to their apartment hand in hand, returning acknowledgments and greetings before letting the door close behind them. The apartment’s clean lines and functional furniture spoke of a couple who’d never quite turned the place into a home. It was somewhere to fall asleep, or pass a few free hours reading, or watching a mindless drama on one of Crossways’ entertainment channels, all simply a prelude to falling into bed.

  It backed on to a shared central quadrangle that had been planted over a year ago and was now a lush garden.

  Cara opened the double doors.

  “You got a bench.” Ben halted on the threshold and looked around.

  “I persuaded the workshop guys. They didn’t even make me put in a requisition in triplicate.”

  “Your powers of persuasion—”

  She shook her head. “It was all for you. The Free Company loves you.”

  He harrumphed, but all the same he sat down.

  Cara made tea, glad to be doing something normal and domestic.

  She set a mug down on the bench beside him, then sat down herself.

  “I’ve missed you,” he said at length.

  “I’ve missed you, too.”

  “When I was . . . dying . . . I suddenly realized we’d never taken time to do anything fun.”

  “Fun?”

  “You know, a tourist trip, maybe to somewhere like the ice fields of Venezuela—the planet not the country. They say the frozen Klemiss Falls are spectacular. Two thousand meters of ice as bright as diamonds. Or maybe you prefer an urban vacation. The Golden City of Akhbar on Timon Two has everything city life can offer. I’ve never even asked what you like to do for fun.”

  “The Klemiss Falls sound good, or Akhbar, but right now . . .”

  She glanced inside to the bedroom door.

  He smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  “Ronan recommended gentle snuggling.” She took the mug of tea from him and set it down, then leaned into him. She could smell the faint antiseptic aroma of the infirmary on his skin. His lips tasted of tea; his tongue was hot.

  “I think Ronan’s forgotten how long we’ve been apart.” He sighed. “How about we compromise? I’ll let you do all the work. Well—maybe not quite all the work, but—”

  “I get the idea. Come on, mister. If I’m in charge, better not keep me waiting.”

  “I’d forgotten how bossy you were.”

  “Yeah, right.” She took one of his hands and pulled him to his feet.

  He caught her by the waist. “I love you, Cara Carlinni, even if you boss me about.”

  All of a sudden, she was hot and needed to get out of her buddysuit fast.

  “I’m glad I have my uses.” She led the way to their bedroom where the utilitarian gray was broken by a nonstandard burnt-orange coverlet. She pointed and then placed her fists on her hips and did her best drill sergeant’s voice. “Okay, mister, strip and onto the bed. Let’s start as we mean to go on.”

  “I thought you were going to do all the work.”

  “You want me to . . . All right. Arms up.” He did as he was told, and she grasped his singlet and pulled it off in one quick movement, helped by him bending forward. He grinned at her. His brush with death didn’t show in his body, lean and hard. She wanted to run her hands over his brown skin, but stepped back, pressing her lips together.

  He looked down at his trousers, then at her, then down at his trousers again.

  “Oh, all right. Big kid, or what?”

  “Ronan said—”

  “Ronan said you were a pain in the backside, and he wanted you out of his infirmary.”

  Ben’s mouth twitched up at the corners.

  She mock-scowled at him, debating the best way to tackle the trousers. From the front and her face would be on a level with . . . and there was already a bulge forming there. From the back and . . . well . . . he had a delightful arse, of course. She needed radical action. Yes, he was close enough to the bed.

  She stepped up and ran her hands around the inside of his waistband. Chuckling at his gasp, she slid her hands
lower, twanged the soft band, pulled it quickly over the bulge, and tangled his trousers around his knees.

  “Ha! Got you right where I want you.” She toppled him onto the bed and pulled the trousers off, throwing them across the room.

  “Be gentle with me. I’m a fragile flower.” He clasped both hands behind his head, trying not to grin and failing.

  “More like a tree.”

  How quickly could she tear off her own buddysuit? Or maybe she should slow down. She unclasped the top half of the suit from the bottom and began to unfasten it. She heard him draw a sharp breath and took her time. “Should I have music for this?”

  “I’d sing, but I can’t hold a tune in a bucket.”

  The waist fastenings on the trousers made a soft ripping sound as she pulled apart the hook and loop fastening.

  “Music to my ears. Come over here.” He wriggled to the far side of the bed and made room.

  “I thought I was in charge this time.”

  “Oh, yes. You can be in charge of me any time.”

  She stretched beside him. “Gods, you’re hot.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Not that kind of hot.” She play-punched him lightly on the arm. “Temperature hot. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I will be soon.”

  “Well, maybe that kind of hot, too.” She straddled him, hovering on knees and hands, and leaned forward to kiss him, forehead, eyes, nose, and finally mouth.

  Ben ran his hands down her back, his fingers eliciting shivers along her spine and down to the cheeks of her arse.

  “I’ve missed you so much,” he whispered, his breath landing on her chin in hot puffs. “Missed this.” His touch became more intimate. She sagged against his chest.

  *I love you, Ben Benjamin.* She opened up her thoughts to his thoughts and sank onto him.

  It was like coming home.

  In the afterglow of lovemaking, lying with Cara in his arms, Ben’s world turned around right again.

  Now she was with him, and there was so much to do.

  “You’re doing it again.” Cara snuggled closer into his side.

  “What?”

  “Thinking, planning.”

  “You’re an Empath. You know I am.”

  She sighed. “Sometimes it would be nice not to be an Empath or a Telepath. Do you ever wish you’d never become a Navigator? If you’d tested negative for talent, or maybe refused an implant?”

  He took two long breaths. “No. I am what I am. I’m pretty sure Nan knew I was going to leave Chenon, just as she knew Rion was going to stay on the farm.”

  “Your Nan is very perceptive.”

  “Yes, she is. We could never slip anything past her when we were growing up.”

  “It must have been hard, losing her son and daughter-in-law and having to give up a job she loved to take on two grief-stricken boys.”

  “I used to daydream I’d gate into the Folds and find Mom and Dad’s liner, and they’d still be alive.”

  “Do you ever wonder . . . ?”

  “How my parents died?”

  “Maybe I wasn’t going to put it quite so bluntly.”

  “I used to think ships that disappeared in the Folds kept on going until their supplies ran out or their systems failed. Now I wonder how many of them were swallowed by the Nimbus.” His voice broke on the last word. “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to get all emotional.”

  “Does flying the Folds still trouble you?”

  “All the time, but it’s not going to stop me.”

  “Can’t live with it; can’t live without it?”

  “Something like that.”

  He hugged her to him and kissed the top of her head. She took the hint and stopped asking questions.

  Cara woke in a cold sweat, heart pounding, convinced a klaxon was sounding somewhere.

  It wasn’t.

  She listened to the silence.

  Not silence. Crossways was never silent. The great space station thrummed with energy at a pitch somewhere below the level of human hearing. Her ears might not recognize it, but her bones did.

  She turned over to see if Ben was awake, and blinked twice, surprised to find him sitting on the edge of the bed, a black shape in the darkness.

  “Light.”

  The whispered word brought a gentle glow to their room, softening the utilitarian edges.

  Ben hadn’t moved. He sat, bent forward, hands on knees, head hanging, breathing silently only by the greatest of effort.

  Cara watched his ribs moving under the well-muscled back, not touching him in case he was still locked in a dream.

  Before she left with Jussaro, Ben had been getting on top of the nightmares, and though she’d suffered from flashbacks herself, they’d eased off while she’d been away. Lying next to Ben, she remembered how bad it had been. And being an Empath meant that Cara had shared a lot of other people’s trauma.

  Ben sighed and shuddered, sitting up straight and scrunching up his shoulders, then relaxing them.

  “Bad dreams?” she asked.

  “The usual.”

  “Ah, that one again. You ought to be old friends with it by now.”

  “It’s as if I know I’m dreaming, but I can’t wake up. The Nimbus is clawing toward us—you’re there, too, you know—and Garrick and Kitty Keely. Kitty steps into it. We grab Garrick and push off for the Solar Wind. That’s how it happened, or how I remember it, anyway.”

  “Yes. Me, too.”

  “But this time it follows us, tendrils reaching out, black, but still outlined against the blackness of foldspace. And I know whichever one of us it reaches first will be lost forever, subsumed into whatever it is.”

  “You attribute human emotions? See it as a vengeful killer?”

  “No.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It doesn’t have human emotions. It’s so alien that we have no common ground.”

  “Yet in foldspace we’re the aliens.”

  “Yes, we are. We travel through foldspace, but we don’t understand it.”

  Cara knelt behind Ben on the bed and began to massage his shoulders. He stretched his neck first to one side and then the other. “Mmm, that’s good.”

  “I had a dream as well,” she said.

  “Did you?”

  “But I can’t remember what it was.” She worked on the knots in his neck. “All I remember is I thought there was a klaxon sounding. I woke up in a panic, surprised to find everything quiet.”

  “Klaxon. There might have been a klaxon in my dream, too. I’m sorry if I projected anything.”

  “I don’t think I picked it up from you.”

  He might not be a strong long-distance Telepath, but Ben had the tightest natural shield of anyone she knew. She could rarely sense what he was thinking. Maybe that was one of his attractions. One among many. She pressed herself against him, skin to skin and put her arms round his shoulders.

  He leaned into her. “Is that an invitation?”

  “Do you need one?”

  He chuckled and rolled into the bed.

  Ben tried to stick to what Ronan had told him to do, but two days of bed rest was ridiculous when he was perfectly fit to sit behind his desk for an hour or two. Well, maybe three or four.

  Wenna gave him the hard stare. Cara threw up her hands in mock disgust and said if he dropped dead at her feet, she wanted everyone to know she’d tried her best to make him rest.

  Jussaro had announced he was open for business and had already used the unlock codes on Wenna, Ronan, and Marta Mansoro, who were full of relieved smiles. A trickle of people had wandered by the office to ask if it was true that Cara and Jussaro had found a way of reprogramming their implants.

  Ben called in Jussaro, Cara, Wenna, and Ronan. “We’re going to have to find a way to bottle
up this story or everyone on Crossways will know. If it gets back to the megacorps, they’ll start to reprogram all their new implants and we won’t be able to do a thing to help future deserters.”

  “When Zandra was using this to unlock implants, it was only on one or two grateful individuals at a time,” Jussaro said. “Then they were quickly sent on to a new life somewhere in the colonies. I don’t believe she ever used it widely like we’re attempting to do.”

  “Did anyone else have the codes, or was it only Zandra?” Ben asked.

  “Only Zandra as far as I know.”

  “So if you hadn’t found her, the secret would have died with her?”

  “I’m afraid it would.”

  “Do you intend that to be the case in future?”

  There was a long silence. At last, Jussaro said, “Are you asking me to give you the codes?”

  Ben shook his head. “Not me. I’m asking you to consider what happens if something happens to you. You should make a plan.”

  “You’re right, of course. It has to be someone with both Telepathy and Empathy.” He looked at both Cara and Ronan. “And someone with a delicate touch.”

  Cara leaned back as if removing herself from the potential list. Ben thought he might know the reason for that.

  “Also,” Jussaro said, “I could use some help. It’s an exacting procedure. I can probably only manage four per day. It makes sense to have a few people with the capability.”

  “That’s up to you,” Ben said. “I’m not pressuring you one way or the other. But each person whose implant you unlock has to keep the secret.”

  “Does it mean the Free Company is supporting Sanctuary Mark II?” Jussaro asked.

  Did it? Ben had to think about that.

  “Maybe. For now.”

  He saw Cara and Jussaro share a knowing smile. Oh, hell, what had he agreed to?

  After Jussaro left without asking her to share the secret of the unlock codes, Cara relaxed. She didn’t want anything to do with them. The trauma of Donida McLellan was still there, beneath the surface. Was she over it? In a sense, yes, she could function again and bury the memories, but she’d not only gone through Neural Readjustment herself, but while Donida McLellan had been inside her head, she’d learned far more than she wanted to know about how to twist someone’s mind.