Nimbus

by Jacey Bedford

  That was five years ago.

  They’d tried to keep a lid on the news. Three years ago, however, they’d lost ninety-six flights, most of them freight but some passenger flights. Not all of them under the direct control of the Trust, of course; some were colony-to-colony routes, which enabled them to fudge the figures.

  Then two years ago they’d lost a hundred and forty-five ships and last year two hundred and six. This year, so far, was looking no better.

  Crowder leaned against the invisible glass-steel wall, trusting his bulk to what looked like nothing. He’d never liked heights. Taking this elevator as opposed to the conventional ones was his way of testing himself.

  If the new settlers knew the rate of loss, they wouldn’t be so eager to sign up for off-world travel—hence one of the reasons for keeping quiet. They hadn’t told the crews either, but rumors were rife and even the frequent changing of routes and the splitting up and relocation of crews didn’t help. Everyone knew someone who was no longer responding to messages.

  Were other corporations losing ships and colonies and, like the Trust, squashing the news in case the value of stocks fell?

  The elevator slowed and the door opened onto the plush carpet and refined opulence of the executive suite where a pretty young thing in a traditional Zulu beadwork collar against a dark-brown, flesh-colored singlet and a multihued wraparound skirt offered him a beverage of his choice.

  “Iced coffee.” He needed the caffeine, but it was too hot for regular coffee.

  Yolanda Chang, in charge of the research and development division, entered the suite from the far door. Had she been talking to Tori LeBon in advance of the meeting?

  Isaac Whittle, the vice-chair, was thirty seconds behind Chang. Damn, that was ominous. Thirty seconds behind Whittle, the door opened again to reveal Le Bon. She’d had a complete makeover since the last time he’d seen her, possibly a rejuvenation treatment or three. She was taller by ten centimeters and thinner by twenty. Maybe Crowder should have taken advantage of his doctor’s offer. He pulled in his gut and then released it with a grunt. Dammit! If his brain wasn’t enough, he might as well retire now.

  The elevator announced its presence again with a chirpy beep. Adam Hyde and Beth Vanders arrived together, like they always did. Crowder had made it his business to check that out. Neither his wife nor her husbands knew about their shared past. Vanders and Hyde had had a child together, and though they were not lovers now, they’d always retained an affection for each other.

  Sophie Wiseman and Andile Zikhali were the last two to arrive, in the same elevator, but a professional distance apart. Wiseman was a wild card, easily swayed by rhetoric and ruled by her heart. Zikhali was ruled by his head, cool and logical and always looking at the bottom line.

  “We’re not late, are we?” Wiseman asked as she looked around and counted heads.

  “Not at all, but now we’re all here, I suggest we get started.” LeBon led the way into the boardroom with its round table, but no gallant knights. “You all know why we’re here. As of today, five hundred and eighteen Trust ships have been lost in the Folds in the last five years as compared to thirteen ships in the preceding decade.

  “Our ships are now impossible to insure at any price. We bear the financial losses in their entirety.”

  Isaac Whittle cleared his throat and looked at her pointedly.

  “Of course,” she said, “our primary concern is the loss of life.”

  “Do we have a figure on that?” Vanders asked.

  “I have it here.” Whittle’s handpad projected an interactive holographic screen. He stared into it. “In round figures, it’s almost fifty thousand. If you want the exact numbers, it’s forty-nine thousand, eight hundred and ninety-two, including five thousand and thirty-eight psi-techs. Our psi-techs, hence the recruitment drive in the last couple of years.”

  “They weren’t all ship crews,” Zikhali said.

  “No. Two thousand five hundred from the crews, mainly Navigators, Telepaths and Psi-Mechs. The rest were Special Ops, Colony Ops, and—in one spectacular loss—a thousand troops on their way to deploy on the rim to try and de-escalate the Burnish War.”

  “Madam Chair.” Crowder inserted himself into the discussion. “One doesn’t have to be a mathematician to run the numbers. The ships that have been lost in foldspace were all transiting via the gates. Only one ship out of five hundred and eighteen was a jumpship. While I appreciate the percentage of jumpships in use is tiny, I would like to bet it’s more than point two percent. Until now, jumpships have been an expensive alternative to jump gates, but maybe that’s about to change. How many more ships can we afford to lose? Jumpships would give us a very nice edge.”

  And they would also be very useful against Crossways.

  Benjamin had run rings around the megacorporations after the Crossways debacle. He’d stranded them in foldspace, dammit. Something he couldn’t have done if they’d been fitted with jump drives.

  Adam Hyde, always keen to increase his own standing to the detriment of someone else, looked directly at Yolanda Chang. “Perhaps Miss Chang can tell us how long R and D are likely to be before they can provide us with the plans for a retrofit jump drive such as we believe Crossways has access to.”

  “My best people are working on it.” Chang didn’t look happy. The pressure was on.

  “Wasn’t your department trying to get hold of one of those retrofit ships?” Crowder asked, knowing full well that was the case. Hyde was a particularly ineffective Special Ops director. Crowder wouldn’t mind the job himself in the next shuffle.

  “We’ve had our ships looking for one for the last year, but they didn’t look any different, post refit, so capturing one and hauling it off to reverse-engineer the drive has proven difficult.”

  Crowder suppressed a smile. Ships without the drive were easy to capture, but of no use. They’d accidentally taken three of those and had to officially lose them in the Folds to cover up their mistake—easy enough to do right now. The ships that did have the drives tended to use them to evade capture.

  “I have it on good authority, Mr. Crowder, that Alphacorp has approached Crossways to buy their retrofit drive.” Dammit! Vanders always backed Hyde.

  “That may be so, Mrs. Vanders, but I also have information on good authority, and my good authority tells me that Crossways has not yet agreed to sell, though negotiations are ongoing.”

  “If they do, it will put them two jumps ahead of the Trust. I understand that after the Olyanda affair, it’s likely to be a cold day in Hell before Crossways trades with us.”

  “The very fact that Alphacorp is desperate for the retrofit jump drive shows that in all possibility their ship losses are as bad as ours, if not worse.”

  “If I could make a suggestion,” Andile Zikhali said. “We should make representation to all the other megacorporations and even to the smaller corporations and the independents to find out, in confidence, how widespread this problem is.”

  Chapter Thirty

  LOPEZ

  “DON’T STAND OVER ME. THIS IS TRICKY.”

  Ben stepped aside as Ronan plumbed in lines to the frozen psi-tech’s groin and underarms. He was usually on the receiving end of the cryo process, so seeing it from this end was something of a novelty.

  “How long, Doc?”

  “Can’t rush the revival process. Six hours, maybe. He should be close by then.”

  “I’ll come back in five.”

  “You do that.” Ronan dismissed him from the infirmary with a wave.

  Cara was working a full shift on comms. The apartment felt empty. No doubt there were a hundred and one things in his office that needed attending to, but right now he didn’t feel like settling down to mundane matters. Wenna could and would deal with most of the questions that fell across his desk.

  He wandered down the length of Blue Seven to t
he refectory. Food was a good idea.

  The Listers were sitting with full plates before them. J.P. was in his chair and Pami was fussing over him. She looked up and saw him approaching. Her face lit up, and Ben felt his insides lurch. What man wouldn’t when a woman who looked like that delivered the ultimate smile?

  “Commander Benjamin, we were discussing the next outing,” Pami said as she collected a mug of tea and slid into the seat opposite. “And thank you for prompt payment for Howling Wolf.”

  “You’re welcome. You did a good job. Not too tired, I hope.”

  “I could sleep for a week,” J.P. said. “I always can after a job. Pami has different needs.”

  The way he said needs, and the way Pami looked at him, made Ben hot in regions he shouldn’t be thinking about. He took a long pull of his tea and scalded his tongue. Blast!

  “There’s a pile of work waiting for me,” he said. “Tomorrow we deliver a Mark II engine, engineers, and supplies to Howling Wolf. The day after we’ll go hunting for another Eastin-Heigle prize. Can you be ready?”

  “I’m always ready,” Pami said.

  He felt his face grow hot like a schoolboy. Good job a blush hardly showed on his brown skin.

  What troubled him as he walked to the office was that he found himself thinking how easy it would be to accept her unspoken invitation. And if he did, he’d regret it for the rest of his life. He’d better steer clear of Pami Lister in future.

  “Hey, Boss.” Wenna looked up from her screen. “Max was looking for you, and Garrick asked if you could call and see him.”

  He caught a tub cab to the Mansion House. Garrick was in his office on the ground floor, the public level of the Mansion House below the colonnaded main entrance.

  “Are you on your own today?” Ben asked, looking around for Mother Ramona.

  “Yes, Mona’s taking care of a diplomat with a sudden need to be elsewhere.”

  “Business as usual, then.”

  “More or less. Well done on Howling Wolf.”

  “She’s exactly what Oleg Staple asked for. I’ve sent you a full report.”

  “Thanks. That’s not why—” He brushed a hand through his hair. “Do you dream?”

  “Most people do.”

  “I mean, about . . .”

  “The Nimbus.”

  “Yes.”

  “I do.”

  Garrick closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “I thought it was just me.”

  “You should have said something sooner.”

  “I couldn’t . . . I didn’t . . .” He took a deep breath. “I’ve been taking care of it.” He pulled a bulb out of his pocket. “With this.”

  Ben frowned. The little bulb was anonymous.

  “Detanine,” Garrick said. “It helped me to sleep at first—five or six hours of dreamless sleep. Now I get barely two.”

  “Have you spoken to anyone?”

  “Besides you? No. Mona knows. I see her looking at me, but . . .”

  “You need to talk to someone—a specialist.”

  “There isn’t anyone who specializes in what we saw. What was it, Ben? Did we look on the face of a god?”

  “Don’t ask me what it was, but it wasn’t a god no matter how powerful.” He took a deep breath. “When you learn to fly the Folds, your teachers tell you that sometimes you hallucinate in foldspace.”

  “That was no illusion.”

  “Of course not. They’re real. I don’t know why some people see them and others don’t.”

  “But I don’t even have an implant.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Ricky doesn’t, but he can see void dragons. He’ll be a jumpship pilot one day if that’s what he decides to do. You went down a different route. Did you refuse an implant?”

  “Ha! They didn’t offer an implant program in juvie detention.”

  Ben laughed. “Believe me, the training program I went through was like juvie detention with added exams!”

  “So—the Nimbus . . .”

  “A lot of ships are vanishing in the Folds lately. Maybe we lose them to the Nimbus.”

  “You think?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m not ruling it out. If I were still in the Trust, I’d be pushing for a change in training, but I’m not and I can’t. There is one thing I know, though. What’s in the Folds can’t come through.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “The laws of physics are different there.”

  “So unless I go back into foldspace . . .”

  “It can’t get you. Not in daytime. Not in your dreams.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “It’s the fear that will eat you if you let it.”

  “Right, I’ll work on that.”

  “Good. If it helps, I’m still working on it, too.”

  Ben stayed with Garrick for longer than he anticipated, so with silent apologies to Max, he headed straight to the infirmary in Blue Seven. Oliver Lopez should be thawed by now.

  “How’s he doing, Doc?”

  “He should be coming around soon. If he was scheduled for Neural Readjustment, maybe he’s had some sort of psychotic break, or an episode, or he’s done something antisocial.”

  “I can hear y . . .” The body on the bed spoke. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I can hear you talking about me. None of those things.” He began to cough. Ronan flipped the top half of the bed up until Lopez was in a sitting position, and then raised his feet a little for comfort.

  “Just stay where you are for a moment, Mr. Lopez.” He squirted a puff of something in the man’s face. “Breathe. It will help to clear your lungs.”

  Lopez breathed. “I can hear them creaking like old leather.”

  “It’s only temporary. Cryo has all sorts of unlovely side effects.” He grabbed a bowl as Lopez threw up. “Like that.”

  “Man, I feel like shit.”

  “Here, drink this. It’s Chembal, the single worst tasting thing in the universe.”

  Lopez took a sip and grimaced.

  “It’s to get your electrolyte balance back to normal. Did you know they could make it taste like anything? It could be hot chocolate or a rich red wine, but instead they choose to make it taste like earwax, or maybe sprout juice mixed with chlorine. That’s to take your mind off how your body feels.”

  “Yeah, it’s working.” Lopez held out the cup. “Can my electrolytes stay out of balance for a while longer?”

  Ronan took it. “Unless you fall over and froth at the mouth, though for all we know, that’s why you were in cryo in the first place.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I was in cryo because I said I could see something in foldspace. When they told me it was an illusion, I told them, hell, no, it wasn’t. I touched that thing. It had scales. It spoke to me.”

  “It wasn’t an illusion,” Ben said. He activated the holo image on his handpad, a drawing of the void dragon.

  “Shit! That’s it!” Lopez pressed himself into the bed.

  “What did it say?” Ben asked.

  “It said explosion.”

  “Explosion. You’re sure?”

  “You don’t forget something like that.”

  “Did it say anything else?”

  “It said a name.”

  “What name?”

  “No one I’ve ever heard of: Olivia May Marling.”

  Ben felt as though his stomach flipped right over and then settled with a kind of sick inevitability, somewhere close to his boots.

  “It said what?” Max’s lips felt rubbery and numb. He took a deep breath. “No, don’t say it again, I heard you the first time. I needed time for my brain to catch up. A void dragon said my daughter’s name to a random Alphacorp pilot before she was even born?”

  His legs couldn’t hold him up anymore. Lu
ckily, Ben’s couch caught him. He stared at Ben and Ronan, two people he would trust with his life, who were now babbling impossibilities.

  Ronan knew about his difficulties with Gen and baby Liv. Ben was perceptive enough to have picked up some of it, though he hadn’t asked, and Max hadn’t offered details.

  But now this . . . this was in the nature of a threat. All of Max’s paternal instincts stood to attention inside his head—and his gut, too, if he was honest.

  “We’re not even sure if the void dragons experience time in the linear way that we see it,” Ben said. “Communicating with them has been pretty damn near impossible, but we have no reason to believe they’re antagonistic. One watched your daughter being born, and all it seemed to exhibit was curiosity.”

  “That’s my daughter we’re talking about!” Max wanted to jump up and shout, but his legs felt like jelly.

  “And that’s why we wanted to let you know what Lopez said.” Ronan actually patted Max on the shoulder, then retreated quickly when he saw Max’s expression. “It probably doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Young children are generally not allowed into foldspace. Maybe there’s a reason for that,” Max said, trying to keep his voice from shaking.

  “Pregnant women generally don’t travel the Folds after the first trimester,” Ronan said, “but Gen was piloting Solar Wind with an eight-month bump.”

  “Is that supposed to be a comfort? How many babies have been born in foldspace?”

  “To be honest, I don’t know—”

  “That was a rhetorical question, Ronan. The real question is what do I do? What do we do?”

  “Nothing, for now,” Ben said. “I doubt you were planning to take Liv into the Folds anyway.”

  “You’re looking uncomfortable, Ben. What else is there I should know?”

  “I didn’t think much of it at the time, but when we jumped into Amarelo space to look for salvage, we encountered a void dragon. It didn’t identify Liv in as many words, but it had an image of a newborn in its mind—a picture of Dido Kennedy’s workshop and Gen on the couch giving birth. I told it that the baby was Olivia May Marling.”