Nimbus

by Jacey Bedford

  “We should send out a bulletin to the Monitors,” Ben said.

  “You’re on the Monitors’ most wanted list.”

  “That doesn’t mean I can’t report a crime. They know where I am—where we all are—but they’re not about to come and get us. Not yet, at least.”

  The gate comm beeped. Wenna reached across and tapped it. “Phipps. What have you got?”

  “Fellow says he’s Lev Reznik, and a woman from the auction told him to come here.”

  Cara nodded. “I did. Can you bring him through?”

  It only took a few minutes before a shadow in the doorway announced Hilde Hildstrom and the scaly man. Hilde nudged him through the door and left them all to it.

  “You look like you need more water,” Cara said, springing up out of her chair and filling a large cup at the water cooler. She handed it to him.

  He took a fine muslin kerchief, dunked it in the cup and tied it around his throat, then drank the rest in one gulp.

  “Help yourself.” She indicated the cooler, and he refilled the cup twice before slowing down from gulping to sipping.

  “Well, here I am,” he said. “I guess you bought me fair and square. I was angling for the two women, but they weren’t interested.”

  “You wanted to be bought?” Ben asked.

  “Maybe, if it was the right buyer.”

  *I guess there’s a story here,* Cara said to Ben.

  “Oh, there is,” Lev said. “Sorry, you didn’t mean me to hear that, I suppose. That’s what I do. I can hear what you’re thinking to each other. I’m not a real Telepath. I can’t broadcast, but if two people are in the same room, I can hear what’s going on between them, even when they don’t want me to.”

  “You’re from Aqua Neriffe?” Cara asked.

  “Close—well not geographically speaking. I’m from Aqua Mirek. Aqua Neriffe was the first water world. They did a slightly better job on our throat architecture when they engineered the Mirekians. The Neriffians all talk funny. Too much sibilance on their esses.”

  As if to prove a point, Marta Mansoro arrived in the doorway. “I heard you got sssomeone from Aqua Neriffe,” she said.

  “See what I mean?” Reznik said.

  “Not quite, Marta, Aqua Mirek,” Wenna said.

  “Oh, one of those sssmartarssses. Call me if you need sssomeone to drown him for you.”

  “We will, don’t worry.”

  “Sweet girl,” Reznik said to Marta’s retreating back. “I think she likes me.”

  She flipped him the finger over her shoulder.

  “I like her.” He laughed.

  “So what are we going to do with you, Mr. Reznik,” Cara said.

  “I don’t know, my dear. It was your money. You tell me.”

  “We don’t keep slaves on Crossways,” Ben said. “Would you like to be repatriated to Aqua Mirek?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. I had a little trouble with err . . . the government.”

  “Which one?”

  “Both of them. I was sitting in on a trade deal to make sure there was nothing underhanded going on, but the Westphalians hadn’t declared my presence to the Orcadians or to their own negotiators, and I overheard something I shouldn’t have, which is how I ended up shipping out in a hurry.”

  Cara raised an eyebrow, which Ben interpreted as: What the hell are we going to do with this one?

  He shrugged in reply.

  From outside, they heard the sound of a voice raised in frustration. “I know my blasted way, Hildstrom. Let me through.”

  “That’s Dido Kennedy,” Cara said.

  “Uh, what now?” Ben said.

  They didn’t have long to wait. Kennedy hove into view dragging Efra along with her by one hand. Neither of them had changed since the previous evening, and Kennedy’s bulk wobbled along in the sparkling red dress. Efra had been crying. Kennedy’s face was thunderous.

  “She’s all yours, Benjamin.” Dido used Efra’s wrist as a lever and swung her through the office door. “Turns out her parents sold her to Roxburgh’s goons and don’t want her back in case of repercussions. There were already a couple of suspicious characters sniffing around this morning. I sat up all night with a pulse pistol in my lap, but I can’t keep her safe. Recruit her into the Free Company so that I know she’s going to be all right.”

  “Hey, Lev.” Efra’s face lit up at the sight of the water man. “You signing up as well?”

  “Maybe. Would you like that?”

  “Of course.”

  “She’s never had much schooling, but she’s a bright little thing,” Kennedy said. “Picks up ideas real fast.”

  Ben massaged his temples with the finger and thumb of one hand. “All right, Dido, leave her here. We’ll figure out something to do with her.” He looked at Lev Reznik. “With both of them.”

  “Jussaro?” Cara said.

  “Jussaro,” Ben confirmed. “Sanctuary starts here.”

  There was no point in waiting.

  “I need to see Garrick,” Cara told Ben. “I have an idea.” She took a deep breath. “Jussaro and I have been trying to figure out what to do about Sanctuary. Obviously bringing a bunch of deserting psi-techs to Crossways would be a bad idea for all sorts of reasons. I think—Jussaro and I think—we’d be better setting up on Olyanda.”

  She caught the quick turn of Ben’s head. It might mean them being apart for a while. She continued before she let that thought distract her.

  “Will you come and see Garrick with me? I’d like your support.”

  “You and Jussaro have it all planned. You don’t need me.”

  Was that hurt in his voice? Ben had always had such a tight natural shield that she’d rarely been able to tell what he was thinking if he didn’t choose to share.

  “If Garrick says yes—”

  “I doubt he’ll say no. I presume you’ve worked it all out with Jussaro.”

  “No, not entirely. I was hoping you—”

  “Cara, I—oh, just go and see Garrick.”

  She didn’t drag it out. She put in a quick call and yes, Garrick was free in about an hour. Instead of Ben, she took Jussaro and a couple of Tengue’s mercs as security.

  “I’m not usually invited to meet with the exalted,” Jussaro said. “I’m not expected to genuflect, am I?”

  She was about to take him seriously when she saw the twinkle in his eye.

  “I’m sure Garrick wouldn’t mind a bit of adulation. You could try going down on one knee and kissing his ring.”

  “If I thought it would help, I would.”

  But as it turned out, ring-kissing wasn’t on the agenda. Garrick welcomed them into his office rather than a formal meeting room. After the pleasantries and offer of beverages, Cara settled down to business.

  “It’s my understanding that since you’ve set up a new landing site close to the platinum processing plant, the old landing site is no longer in use. We’d like to take it over.”

  “‘We’ being Sanctuary?” Garrick asked.

  “Officially, a school for the naturally psi and a training college for the newly implanted. That would include any psi-techs Crossways needed us to train. Jussaro being the main instructor, of course. It would tie in with Ben training your jumpship pilots.”

  Garrick shook his head. “The original landing site took a pounding from the Trust fleet. Leah Nolan’s report said not much was salvageable.”

  “If I can take a party of Free Company down to assess it, we can see what’s left. All the temporary buildings are modular, so we may be able to retrieve something. The original biodegradable buildings might only be good for another year or so, but there are also the medonite panels from the storage units, the barns, and the dining hall. We can reuse them and, possibly, the original landing vehicle.”

  “It took a
hit in the battle.”

  “It did, but it might not be a total write-off. Give us a week to make an assessment. It’s not as if there isn’t plenty of space on Olyanda for us to build Sanctuary.”

  Garrick nodded. “I suppose it would be a resource for us, too. What will it cost?”

  “I’ll let you know after the assessment. We’ll need subsidizing with supplies, but we’d need that if we stayed on Crossways. Eventually Sanctuary will supply psi-techs, pilots, and Navigators to both Crossways and the Free Company, so we’re not asking for something for nothing. It’s an investment.”

  “Yes,” Garrick said. “I think we can agree to support your school on a trial basis if you find the landing site on Olyanda is usable. Let’s say we give it a year and then reassess it.”

  Cara nodded. “A year sounds fair.”

  She needn’t spend the whole year on Olyanda, she told herself. There would still be plenty of opportunities to be with Ben.

  While Jussaro continued to work his way through the Free Company personnel, unlocking their implants so the Trust couldn’t find them again, Cara spent some time in the comms chair, checking out the long-range tel-net, seeing what was happening on the inhabited worlds.

  She was disturbed to find that three passenger liners, totally unconnected with each other and on different routes, had vanished in the Folds in as many weeks. It was big news on Earth and on the inner system colonies, Mars, Trappist 1E, Chenon, and Drogan’s World. Altogether, over seven thousand souls had been lost.

  Two freighters had also been lost, one from Cranford and the other from Prairie, but since both were independent colonies, their loss hardly made a ripple across the net. Besides, in total, the loss of life was only fourteen; the loss of seven thousand souls overwhelmed it. It mattered to the families of the fourteen, though.

  Cara logged the losses in the incident file they’d been keeping ever since the encounter with the Nimbus. They had nothing to compare the losses against, but she was sure they were escalating. She logged into the station’s records and set a search for ship losses over the last twenty-five years and sent the result to her handpad.

  Chapter Nineteen

  GATE

  A TINGLE IN BEN’S MIND ANNOUNCED CARA connecting to Valois, one of Garrick’s jumpship pilots who was currently shadowing the remains of the enemy fleet left over from the Battle for Crossways.

  Ben had destroyed the temporary jump gate the megacorps’ fleet had used to mass close to Amarelo space before the attack on Crossways. Then in the aftermath, with the station safely in Olyanda space, he’d gone back and drawn the Amarelo jump gate through behind him. It had left the combined battle fleet high and dry, since none of the ships had their own jump drives. It would take them years to journey to the nearest usable jump gate at sublight speeds.

  The megacorps had tried to build a temporary jump gate, but Ben had destroyed it. Now he had a relay of observers following the fleet in case the megacorps tried to build a new jump gate.

  They were building a new jump gate right now according to Valois.

  “Let’s go blow up a jump gate,” Ben said, easing himself into the pilot’s chair on Solar Wind’s flight deck. He grinned at Cara, already at the comms station.

  “It feels like forever since we’ve been on a jaunt together,” she said. “Can you call it a jaunt if you’re about to go and engage an enemy fleet?”

  “Whatever we call it, let’s make it count.”

  Cara opened the comm. “Crossways Control, this is Solar Wind requesting exit from Port 22.”

  “Solar Wind, stand by.”

  “Standing by.”

  “Crew secure.” Yan Gwenn swiveled in his seat at the systems station.

  They carried a small crew: himself, Cara, Yan, Dobson in engineering, Gwala—borrowed from Tengue for his weapons skills—and Ronan Wolfe in sick bay, at Cara’s insistence, because this had the potential to turn very dangerous very quickly.

  No change there, then.

  *Jake?* Ben asked Cara.

  *Slipped away twenty minutes ago,* Cara said. *He should be in position by now.*

  *Good.*

  Ben allowed himself to blink slowly. He’d had the usual sleepless night, knowing he’d soon have to contend with the Folds. At least not sleeping meant not dreaming.

  “Fifteen.” He’d been keeping count despite his thoughts, or perhaps because of them. Would the void dragon manifest on this trip?

  “Ten,” Yan said.

  Cara’s voice went out shipwide over the speaker system. “Eight seconds to foldspace. Six . . . five . . . four . . .”

  Ben touched the jump drive controls and reached out with his mind, linking into the ship and searching for the right path to take them from Olyanda local space to Amarelo space, two AU out from the system’s star—the area of space where Crossways used to be, allowing for orbital drift—the scene of the battle almost a year ago.

  “Three . . . two . . . one.”

  With a deep breath, Ben nudged the Solar Wind out of reality and into the Folds.

  • • •

  His stomach rises up into his throat and he swallows hard. Everything slows, or else his mind is running fast. It’s pitch-dark, but he can see everything clearly outlined as a negative image. The Folds are never the same twice. He daren’t think about his encounter with the Nimbus. In his mind it’s an appalling manifestation of nothingness, more terrifying even than the void dragons. Because he’s deliberately avoiding thinking about it, he thinks about it.

  “Engineering A-okay,” Dobson announces over the shipboard comm, breaking his train of thought.

  “Nice transition, Ben. Medical all locked down and secure.” Ronan reports. “Seen anything we should know about?”

  “Nothing so far,” Ben says. He knows why Cara insisted Ronan should come. His journeys through foldspace have not been entirely uneventful since he first encountered the void dragons. That trip nearly killed him. Now they’re attracted to him. They know him. He only wished he knew them, or at least, knew what they were, what game they were playing, and what the rules of that game were.

  “Oh, here they come . . .” Cara says.

  Two otter-kind swim through the bulkhead and turn lazy circles.

  *Hey, baby,* Cara says to one of the otter-kind as it spirals around behind her and looks over her shoulder at the comms screen before doing a lazy backflip across the flight deck.

  *Otter-kind, Ronan.* Ben connects mentally. *Do you see them?*

  He lets Ronan see through his own eyes, not something he would usually allow for anyone except Cara, but Ronan is a good friend, an exceptional doctor, and has a delicate mind-touch.

  *I see them. Oh . . . * Ronan’s mental voice is filled with wonder.

  The otter-kind nudge Ben’s shoulder one after the other before departing down into the ship.

  *They may be coming your way,* he tells Ronan.

  *I’ll let you know if I see anything.*

  Most people can’t see the otter-kind and the void dragons. Not even all Navigators can see them. The ability to see them is linked to the ability to navigate foldspace in a jumpship without using the gate system that connects the vast trading networks. When recruiting jumpship pilots, Ben uses their ability to see void dragons as his first criterion. It’s empirical evidence that they’ll be able, with training, to fly the Folds without beacons.

  He’s not sure which way round it is. Does the ability to see void dragons make a good jumpship pilot or does being a good jumpship pilot imbue the ability to see void dragons? Or is it something else entirely that gives a person the ability to do both?

  Cara didn’t used to be able to see them, but having connected with Ben and seen them through his mind, she can now see them for herself. She’s not even a Navigator, so what’s that all about?

  There’s a disturbance in the
cabin pressure and a huge dragon’s head pushes through the ceiling without disrupting its solidity. It looks at him, swivels its bulging eyes to take in the whole cabin, then shrinks itself down to fit and floats gently to the deck.

  Cara jumps and leans back in her chair to avoid letting it touch her.

  *It’s here, Ronan.* Ben lets Ronan in on his vision, curious to see if Ronan, like Cara, will develop the ability to see them once he’s been guided in the right direction.

  Yan, at the systems station, doesn’t see it at all and carries on monitoring the Solar Wind’s path through the Folds as if the void dragon’s barbed tail hasn’t sliced him in half as it lashes back and forth. The creature stills and settles on its haunches. Its eyes are level with Ben’s.

  *What do you want?* Ben forms words in his mind but what he transmits to the void dragon is simply *?*

  The void dragon blinks and then a picture forms in Ben’s mind. It’s Dido Kennedy’s workshop on Crossways in the underbelly of Red One. It’s quite clearly the day Ben flew Crossways through the Folds to Olyanda. But the void dragon flicks past the jump drive to the scene playing out at the side of the workshop, Gen giving birth. Cara and Max in attendance. Nature is taking its course. With a final slither Max is holding his new daughter and placing her on Gen’s belly. The void dragon’s vision zooms in on the pink-faced, newly born infant.

  *That’s Olivia May Marling,* Ben tells it.

  The void dragon asks, *?*

  *Baby,* Ben says. *It’s how we make more of our kind.*

  The void dragon shakes its head. If it understood language, that would be a definite no. Ben decides to go with it.

  *That’s not what you wanted, is it?*

  The void dragon shakes its head again and its expression says it’s finding the lack of communication frustrating.

  *You and me both, buddy.*

  “I can see it.” Ben hasn’t been aware of Ronan in his mind, but now Ronan’s head and shoulders appear from the access tube. “I saw the otter-things so I wondered if . . . I can! I’m seeing it myself, not only through you.”

  “Welcome to the club. If only we could figure out what it wants.”