“I don’t think there’s much doubt about that,” Ronan says. “It’s formed some kind of attachment. It wants to see the baby.”
The void dragon offers a toothy grin and departs the flight deck the same way it arrived.
“I can’t see Gen ever allowing that to happen, can you?” Ben asks, wondering what would happen if it did.
“Not in a million years.”
“Seven minutes, Boss.” Oblivious to the presence of the void dragon, Yan calls the time since they entered the Folds.
“Strap in if you’re staying,” Ben tells Ronan. The medic straps into one of the two passenger seats on the flight deck.
Ben wrenches his thoughts away from void dragons and Gen’s baby and the thought of them meeting. Instead, he searches for the line to Amarelo space. That’s what a Navigator does—follows the tides of the universe as they ebb and flow—knows which way is up and how to get from A to B.
He can still pick up a disturbance around Amarelo. Not surprising. The aftermath of a space battle lingers in foldspace, even more than a year on. Ben finds the line, follows it, and with a wrench they pop into realspace—not exactly where Crossways used to be, but close in space terms, somewhere ahead of the convoy of battleships.
• • •
“There they are,” Ben said as Yan enhanced the image on the main screen.
At sublight speeds it would take the convoy close to twenty years to reach the next nearest jump gate. Ben felt sorry for the individual crewmembers, but having the megacorps fleet depleted was an advantage they couldn’t afford to lose.
“Something on the long-range scanner,” Yan said. “Looks like the fleet.”
“On screen,” Ben said.
“Checking the open comms lines,” Cara said.
Ben knew she’d be checking both transmissions and telepathic chatter between ships. “Let me know if you find anything interesting.”
At the very farthest range of their scanners a knot of vessels hung motionless in space surrounding a half-built jump gate. The gate would eventually consist of two units orbiting around each other with, when operational, a blacker-than-black two-dimensional oval void in the center. The larger of the two units, the gate impeller, was almost complete.
Arranged around the embryonic gate, in a defensive pattern, were the remains of the combined fleet, vessels of varying sizes, all armed.
“That’s more like it,” Ben murmured.
Their first attempt at gate building had been pathetically easy to knock out. They’d begun to build in a position some two months ahead of the fleet’s then current position on the principle that the farther from the scene of the battle they were, the less likely they would be spotted.
That might have worked if Ben hadn’t had a relay of pilots checking on the fleet and their potential flight path. There were only two possible jump gates within reach at sublight speed. It was obvious from the fleet’s course that they were heading for the Potamis Hub. Finding the half-built gate had been easy enough. Ben had given them enough warning to evacuate the workers before blowing the gate to atoms. The construction vessel, itself a jumpship, but unarmed, had made a hasty retreat.
This time they were using a different strategy. The might of the battle fleet was standing between Solar Wind and the target. Exactly what Ben had expected. It would take them another twenty years to reach Potamis. They were relying on the rescue gate. No one wanted to grow old on a battleship.
“Cara?”
“The chat’s all pretty banal. Some general grumbling. They’re not in danger of starving, but they’re starting to run low on specific supplies. One young man from the Rodontee Cruiser, Lentik, has a craving for peanut protein paste and he’s trying to set up a deal with the quartermaster of the Arquavisa flagship to trade for a case of it, but Arquavisa is driving a hard bargain.” She narrowed her eyes and cocked her head to one side. “There’s a high-grade Telepath on the Alphacorp ship, Tallinn, and he’s making contact calls for the crew members who have families. Some of it’s hard to listen to. ‘Hi, honey, I’ll be home in twenty years, please tell the kids I love them, and remember to dust my fossil collection.’”
“Sticking it to the megacorps is one thing,” Ben said, “but I feel bad about stranding the crews out here. A couple of years ago that could have been any of us. How many times did we put our faith in the corporations to support us, you with Alphacorp, and me with the Trust?”
“I wonder how many of them would quit their posts if they had the chance,” Cara said.
“Are you thinking of offering them the chance?”
“No, of course not.”
Did she say that a little fast?
“Most of them were doing their jobs,” Ben said. “It wasn’t personal. And now they feel abandoned. I would in their place, wouldn’t you? Their bosses could send jumpships to evacuate them within a few days, but the ships and equipment are worth more to the megacorps than the well-being of their crews.”
“You can still hear it in their ship-to-ship chatter,” Cara said. “The crews left behind felt particularly aggrieved when Eastin-Heigle abandoned their ships in favor of evacuating their crews and none of the other megacorps followed suit.”
“More than they value some of their crews,” Cara said. “There’s a lingering resentment that the more powerful psi-techs were recalled and transported on the Monitor ships along with the injured. The guy on the Alphacorp ship refused to go without his crewmates and said that without at least one long-range Telepath the fleet was vulnerable.”
“The Arquavisa flagship has locked on,” Yan said. “We’re still out of effective weapons range, but they’ve seen us.”
“The chatter’s all gone, and the alarm has spread fleet-wide,” Cara said. “They’re ready for us.”
Ben saw the evacuation shuttles springing away from the gate, playing it safe no matter how good the defenses looked. Good. They weren’t underestimating him, and they were determined to have his hide this time. Ben pushed down a few tension-butterflies fluttering in his belly. “Gwala, are you awake?”
“I am not only awake, I’m locked onto that big Alphacorp bastard. He’s presenting us with his side, trying to tempt us in, but he’s prepping a broadside.”
“When he’s within range, give him something to think about.”
“Affirmative.”
“Hold on, everyone.”
Ben blinked Solar Wind into foldspace, had barely half a second to register the change, then emerged into realspace above the Alphacorp ship. Gwala took careful aim and sent out two torpedoes. One plowed a channel directly between two cruisers, the other clipped the rigging from the comms array on the bulbous nose of the Alphacorp ship.
“Good shooting.” Ben was already changing course before missiles from four different ships locked on. He blinked Solar Wind into foldspace again for long enough to lose the lock and then reemerged below and diagonally opposite their previous position. Gwala released two more torpedoes and destroyed two unmanned drones without so much as a flare. Just an imagined pop and they were gone, disintegrating in silence.
Ben barrel-rolled into foldspace to avoid a torpedo, feeling the wobble of a near miss.
• • •
This time foldspace is bright orange and the void dragon is stretched supine across the flight deck. Ben jumps and loses a precious second.
The void dragon says, *?*
*I’ll try to explain next time,* Ben tells it, not knowing whether it understands anything he says.
• • •
They emerged from the Folds on the far side of the enemy battleships, fleeing for their lives; the gate they’d come to destroy still intact behind them.
“Yan, evasive action,” Ben said.
Six ships broke the line to pursue Solar Wind.
“Their admiral isn’t very pleased they’re givi
ng chase,” Cara said. “He’s calling them back.”
“Too late.”
Yan split the screen so they had a view of the six pursuit ships and the half-built gate.
“Any time now, Jake,” Ben said almost to himself. “Any time now.”
The Dixie Flyer popped out of foldspace in the shadow of the gate, close enough to release a couple of preprogrammed limpets. A small fire flared and died as the oxygen inside the gate impeller burned itself out in an eyeblink and an undramatic puff of an explosion marked the end of the gate.
Three ships peeled off from the pursuit of Solar Wind, realizing they were following a decoy, but four of the ships that had held firm to the gate fired both DEWs and hard shell torpedoes at the Dixie.
*Well done, Jake. Now beat it,* Cara said. *Ben will be very unhappy if you scratch the paintwork on his Dixie Flyer. He loves that little boat.*
*Yeah, right. See you on the other side,* Lowenbrun responded.
The Dixie Flyer winked out of sight, and seconds later Ben followed Jake into the Folds.
Chapter Twenty
ESCAPEE
BEN DOCKED SOLAR WIND SAFELY IN PORT 22, having stuck to the rules and emerged from foldspace slightly more than a hundred klicks from the station.
*Jake?* Cara sent out a questing thought.
*Home safe. The Dixie doesn’t have a mark on her. Going to visit with my cousin a while.*
Jake’s cousin Dree was his only family. Barely more than a girl, Dree had grown up in the backroom of Sally’s Bar in Montego, the biggest city—though that wasn’t saying much—on the planet of Vraxos, where life was cheap and sex was cheaper. Jake had brought her to Crossways on the condition that she didn’t continue her old profession. She’d surprised everyone by signing up for courses at the university as soon as it had opened again after the cleanup.
“Tired?” Cara asked Ben as they walked into Blue Seven.
“Gods, yes. My body could sleep for a week, but I haven’t shed the adrenaline yet, so my brain’s hunting for things to do. I’ll file the ship logs and then see about taking a break. It feels as though it should be midnight, but it’s still midafternoon. What about you?”
“Jussaro’s been floating some ideas about Sanctuary. He wanted to chew a few things over.”
Ben made a noncommittal sound.
Her eyes softened as she gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “You should come and talk to him.”
“Later, maybe, when he’s not up to his ears in modifying implants. I wouldn’t want to get in the way of that.”
He turned toward the office, dragging his gaze away from the sway of her hips as she walked down the length of Blue Seven toward Jussaro’s room.
Ben sighed. He was going to get involved in this Sanctuary thing whether he wanted to or not. Cara was invested in the idea, and he was invested in Cara. It wasn’t a bad thing, of course, but he owed his first loyalty to the people of the Free Company, the ones who’d followed him out of the security that working for the Trust provided. As it turned out, they hadn’t had much choice. Job security meant nothing when your boss wanted you dead because you knew too much.
The comm on Wenna’s desk beeped as he passed it.
“If that’s for me, I’m not here,” Ben said.
“It’s a call from Crossways engineers. They’re requesting assistance. They’re clearing some of the subsections below Red One. There’s someone down there. Someone’s injured and there’s an echo of a Telepath, but she’s not responding to anything they’re throwing at her.”
“Okay, I’m on it,” he said. “Alert Ronan, too.”
“You don’t need to do this personally, Boss,” Wenna told him.
He shrugged. “I’ll go take a look.”
Ben had become intimately acquainted with the nooks and crannies of Crossways Station during the days and weeks following the battle. He’d worked with the cleanup crews as one more pair of hands, on a go-anywhere-do-anything basis. More than once he came across Garrick also trying to bury the memory of the Nimbus with sweat and dust.
He didn’t recall this particular part of the station. Any station had its underbelly, and Red One had been lower than that. Dido Kennedy’s workshop, close to the bottom of the central spindle, had been as low as Ben had ever wanted to go, but now he was beneath that.
Four station engineers, easily identified by their green coveralls, stood in the narrow corridor as he approached. They were obviously arguing.
“What’s the problem?” he asked.
They leaped apart as if caught in some mischief. He knew all their faces. Luckily, they had name flashes on their uniforms.
“Anders, didn’t we work together on the Green Four rebuild?”
“Yes, Commander Benjamin.”
He didn’t have a rank now, but that was beside the point. “What’s going on?”
Anders jerked his chin toward an access tube, beneath which were chunks of debris. “We checked this section of the station after the battle, but we didn’t clear it until about six weeks ago. We left it free of rubble. This is all fresh. There’s something or someone up there, and it ain’t a rat. Burgess, here, tried climbing up.” He indicated a young man with a cut on his forehead and a darkening bruise. “Rats don’t throw rocks.”
“Okay, take a break. There will be a medic along soon. Stay within hailing distance. I’ll see if I can get to your not-a-rat.”
He deployed his helm and face mask. “Hey, up there. I’m on my way. I’m a friend.”
He thought he heard voices, but he couldn’t make out any words. He wasn’t even sure they were speaking Basic. How many languages could he could say friend in?
“Umngane. Ushomi. Dost. Vriend. Sadiq. Ami. Amigo. Freund. Ven. Vän. Ystävä.”
He was running out of ideas. Most colonies spoke Basic, a language that had evolved from twenty-second century English, and had been an international language of the air before mankind left Earth. Some colonies favored dialects and regional Earth languages, Arabic, Hindi, Mandarin, Afrikaans and Zulu being among the most popular, but there were regional European languages, too.
Ben cycled through his repertoire of languages again and began to climb.
The tube was way too tight and not altogether safe. Dust and debris rained down on him, but not missiles—at least not deliberate ones unless the person above him was a very bad marksman.
A block of masonry supported on a broken pipe narrowed the access. There must be hundreds of corners like this left over from the battle. Obviously, nothing vital ran through here, or someone would have noticed before now. He shoved against the masonry to see how secure it was. A small landslide of rubble dusted his helm and he paused to clear his faceplate. He had a small laser cutter, but didn’t want to dislodge anything big that would hit him on the way down.
“Hey!” Ronan shouted up from the corridor.
*Sorry,* Ben said. *Trying to clear debris blocking the tube. I can’t see what’s ahead, but there’s someone up here. May be more than one. I can hear voices. Damn! There’s a child crying.*
How many people had taken refuge here? One slip with the laser cutter and there would be one fewer to worry about.
*How many?* Ronan called up to him, mind-to-mind, echoing his own question.
*I can’t tell yet.*
Ben rapped on a piece of pipe, one of several that crisscrossed the tube. It had somehow threaded itself through the ladder which had detached from the tube side. Somewhere above was a huge piece of medonite lodged in the cradle of cables and wires.
The pipe clanged. Someone was rapping in reply.
“Hello!”
Several voices answered, all yelling at once. He clanged the pipe again. “One at a time. How many of you?”
“Four.” A woman’s voice, speaking Basic, but heavily accented.
“Injuries?”
“Broken arm. Head.”
“Same person?”
“No.”
“We’re coming to get you. We have a medic. Hang on.”
“Where you think we gonna go?”
*Ready, Ronan?*
*Yeah. We could use Archie Tatum’s bots right now.*
*Will I do?*
Ben looked down to see Serafin West at the bottom of the shaft, reclining in a float chair.
*What are you doing here?* Ben asked.
*Relax,* Serafin said. *I picked up news of this on the Free Company’s backchat. I’m not getting out of this float chair, but I’ve brought a satchel full of bots and I’m only using my mind to control them. I’ve got my new lung. This is only an infection. I’m on meds. How long have these guys been trapped?*
*Not that long. Ronan, is Serafin about to kill himself?* Ben was torn between his need for a flotilla of bots to chew through the obstruction, and his concern for Serafin, still on sick leave after being badly injured in a scrap with Trust assassins. He had finally decided to retire with his longtime lady friend and grow cabbages on Jamundi, but a recurring lung infection had kept him on Crossways under Ronan’s care.
*I’ll keep an eye on him,* Ronan said. *Come on down. Let the bots do the work.*
Ben inched down the tube, a five-meter drop, using handholds consisting of twisted bits of ladder and some power conduit. His gloves and his buddysuit would protect him from any live current, barring a slap across his exposed face with a loose cable.
He dropped the last two meters and brushed dust and debris from his suit.
“Shit, Benjamin, you look half dead,” Serafin said. “When did you last get some sleep?”
Ben shrugged. “Why do you always say that?”
“Because it’s always true. Your face is gray. In fact, I’ve never seen a brown face quite so gray before, not while its owner was still alive, anyway.”
“It’s dust.” Ben pulled off his gloves and wiped his face, smearing grit into one eye. “See,” he said, blinking rapidly.
Serafin harrumphed. “Shall I send in the boys?”
Nimbus Page 18
