Nimbus

by Jacey Bedford

  Cara heard Ben curse under his breath.

  *We can’t let them get through that fence, or they’ll kill themselves on the security screen,* Ben said. *Okay, Serafin, make yourself useful. Get your Psi-Mechs to rig up a water cannon. Quickly.*

  The town had fire hoses; all they had to do was point them in the right direction.

  Cara watched as the fire hoses drenched the refugees, but the dousing didn’t deter their frenzy. Even the elderly ones, who had been so frail when they arrived, were climbing over each other in an effort to get out of the compound.

  “We don’t know if they’re irredeemable,” Ben said. “Deadly force has to be our last option.”

  The fence wobbled dangerously and began to sag. The refugees put more effort in, this time working together.

  “Tengue’s perimeter shield is strong enough to kill an ox,” Ben said. “We can’t let them through the first fence.” *Serafin, increase pressure on the hoses.*

  In answer, the water scythed from the hoses, bowling over the refugees on the edge of the crowd and slamming the ones in the middle backward into their fellows. One or two lay where they’d fallen, but the others simply climbed onto their feet and kept coming.

  “Shit! Tengue, use your stunners. Knock them out. Let’s get them restrained however we can before they break the fence.”

  The mercs began to fire stun bolts into the crowd. Whenever one person fell, the people behind them merely stepped over, or on top of their fallen companions and kept pushing at the fence. With a shriek of tearing mesh, it gave way and the rearmost trampled over the foremost to get out of the compound, barely meters in front of the force wall. Tengue’s mercs tried to cut them down with stunners before they got that far, but for every one that fell, one made it through and suddenly the air was full of cries and the stench of singed flesh. Tengue’s men didn’t give way. They stood their ground and continued to fire. Every person who fell to a stun bolt was one less collapsed in the perimeter shield.

  It might have been minutes. It might have been an hour. Finally, there was no one moving.

  Cara wrenched her gaze away from the heaped bodies and looked at Ben. His face, gray with shock, said it all.

  “Medics and first responders!” he yelled, and backed it up with a thought.

  It was like a battlefield. No, it was worse than a battlefield, because these people hadn’t been soldiers, or at least not soldiers as Cara knew the term. She couldn’t believe how frenzied the attack had been; even the old ones were super-strong. Now, in the aftermath, a deadly silence had descended.

  Serafin retracted his lobstered helmet and stood hand in hand with Suzi Ruka. “I think that’s me done with carnage,” he said. “I’m ready to retire and grow cabbages. I’m going home with Suzi now. Would you have someone pack up my stuff and send it on next time there’s a ship passing?”

  “Sure, old man,” Ben said. “But if you get bored, you know where to come.”

  “He won’t get bored,” Suzi said. “I have plans.”

  They turned and walked away.

  There was only the soft whir of machinery as the Psi-Mechs began to replace the fence. Those outside it were either dead or unconscious. It was difficult to tell which. The med-techs were already moving among them with psi-techs and mercs working together as stretcher bearers, carrying them inside the compound, dividing them into two groups, the dead and the living. Cara was horribly aware that the dead outnumbered the living by more than three to one.

  “What can I do?” she asked Ronan.

  “Go to the triage station. Restrain the uninjured and put them under guard. I can’t guarantee they won’t start to go mad again once they wake up, but hopefully the stunners will have disrupted whatever brain pattern drove them into that frenzy.”

  “Do you think they were being controlled?”

  “By what? By whom? We found nothing when we examined them. Obviously, we need to look deeper.”

  She shrugged. “Right now, Ben’s alien abduction theory is the only one that fits.”

  Ronan didn’t offer her an opinion. He handed her a sedative spray and a tranquilizer gun, fully loaded. “When they start to come around, give them a whiff of sedative if they’re anxious. If they’re a danger to themselves or anyone else, put them under with one dart.”

  “I know the routine. One dart to sleep, two gives them a chance, three darts kill.”

  “Usually.” He nodded. “Ben gave Crowder three darts and he lived. I don’t know how. Keep the safety on.”

  “Of course.” She coded the safety to her thumbprint.

  Ben was already moving among the fallen across the compound. He felt her light telepathic touch and looked up. *Some of them look as though they’re sleeping, but I know they’re not. How could I let this happen on my watch?*

  *It’s not your fault. Most of them did it to themselves, though they weren’t in their rational minds.*

  *They certainly weren’t. Let’s see what we can do for them, and then we need to find out what’s going on.*

  As Cara waited in triage, it became evident that more and more bodies were piling up and fewer and fewer survivors were in the group for treatment.

  “So many dead,” Cara said softly as Mel Hoffner called it for Captain James Bridgwater. The man had hardly a mark on him. No burns, no obvious trauma. “What do you think killed him?”

  “We’re going to have to do autopsies.”

  “For all that lot?” Cara jerked her head to the area where the bodies were piling up.

  “Don’t they deserve it? Don’t their relatives, or maybe their descendants, deserve to know how they died?”

  “I don’t know. Will it help anything? They already know they’ve been lost in the Folds. Do they need this extra pain?”

  Mel brushed a stray lock of hair out of the way. Her pretty blue eyes glistened with unshed tears. “If it were my relative, I’d want to know.”

  “Would you? Have you ever lost anyone in the Folds?”

  Mel shook her head.

  “Did you know Ben’s parents were lost in the Folds when he was about six and Rion was nine?”

  “I didn’t know they were so close in age.”

  “Rion’s never done cryo. Never even been off Chenon until Ben hauled him off for his own safety. I suspect losing their mom and dad in the Folds had something to do with that.”

  “It didn’t stop the boss.”

  “I think it affected him the opposite way. Chalk and cheese, the pair of them. But I see it in Ben’s eyes when he looks at these people. Might his parents still be out there? If they are, can he reach them? Can he bring them home?”

  “He rescued the settlers from the ark. You all did.”

  “That was different. They hadn’t been lost in foldspace, they’d been dumped in it, in cryo. They’d had no contact with whatever entities are out there. No trauma.”

  “You think these people have been in contact with the void dragons?”

  “No, I don’t. The void dragons could have attacked the Solar Wind at any time. Ben’s made himself vulnerable to them on several occasions, but he’s still here.”

  “So what else is there?”

  “There’s the Nimbus.”

  “I’ve got a live one,” a tall med-tech called as he wheeled a gurney into triage. “Female. According to the DNA database, she’s Kitty Keely.”

  “Kitty may be the key to it all,” Cara said. “We saw the Nimbus take her, yet here she is. Whatever you need to do, keep her alive.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  AUTOPSIES

  “THREE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN SOULS,” BEN said, “and only fifty-three survivors. How did we manage to kill two hundred and fifty-eight civilians? All right . . .” He raised one hand. “I know what the autopsies are saying. Heart failure. The poor devils simply used themselves up with that superhu
man frenzy. And those who didn’t were fried on the security barrier or trampled by their friends.”

  “You’re blaming yourself again,” Cara said as Ben paced up and down their cabin on Solar Wind.

  “No, I’m not—well—yes, maybe a little, but I know it wasn’t me. I wish I could have done something to prevent it. If we get another shipload of refugees requesting to land, next time we sedate them right from the beginning, separate them, in case this was some kind of mass hysteria.”

  “Are you wondering what you’ll do if your parents turn up?”

  “No.” He sighed. “Uh . . . yes. It’s in the back of my mind, I confess, but thousands of travelers have been lost in the Folds. There’s no reason to suppose . . . At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself.”

  “You’re right. There is no reason to suppose anything, but it has to be something you’ve thought about. How must Nan be feeling? She lost a son. You were lucky you had each other.”

  “Yes, we were.”

  “Be kind to her before we leave for Crossways.”

  “Am I ever not kind to her?” Did his face show a degree of shock?

  “Sometimes you take her for granted.”

  “Do I?”

  “In the way you take us all for granted. You know that we know what we’re doing, so you let us get on with it.”

  “As a leadership style, it works pretty well.”

  “Do you think you could stop being my boss for a few moments?”

  “Why?”

  She stood up and blocked his way as he turned. “Because I think we both need to remind ourselves that we’re still alive.” She pulled his face down to hers and kissed him.

  “Ah.” He felt himself relax into her arms.

  Kitty was out cold for three days and then groggy from the low-level sedatives, but she spoke rationally when Ben visited. The frenzied fury had dissipated and though she recalled that there had been some trouble, she didn’t remember what had caused it.

  There were fifty-three survivors, including Kitty, none of whom could be trusted no matter how docile they appeared now.

  Ben and Cara met with Rena Lorient and Jack Mario in the new town hall. It was ten days since the frenzy as they were all beginning to call it. Time for decisions.

  “We can’t leave them here.”

  “You can’t leave them here.”

  Ben and Rena spoke in unison after the initial pleasantries.

  “Well, at least we’re agreed on that,” Ben said.

  The town hall was the settlement’s main administrative building, featuring double-height rooms and lofty windows that let in the slanting late-afternoon sun. The furniture was plain, but functional. A large table, used for council meetings, and somewhat unforgiving chairs. It was the sort of place that said we care about the people more than ourselves. Someone had painted a portrait of Victor Lorient, and hung it on the wall behind the head of the table. It was a little amateurish, but gave a certain impression of the man’s vitality, or at least what it had been. Ben had always found Victor Lorient difficult to deal with, but he hated the idea of seeing him diminished. He was almost pleased that during their whole visit he’d made no effort to get involved with the refugee problem. Mel Hoffner confirmed he’d had a slight stroke, which had left him weakened. No wonder Rena and Jack were doing all the work.

  “I’m sorry for the refugees,” Rena said. “They were ordinary people with a life ahead of them and whatever happened to them—whenever it happened—ended that. I sympathize, but we’re not equipped to either look after them or restrain them here.”

  “We wouldn’t dream of leaving you with the problem,” Ben said. “We still don’t know whether they’ll continue to be dangerous; whether the frenzy will happen again. We need to find out as much as we can, but this isn’t just our problem. The megacorps are losing colonies, too.”

  Rena shivered, as well she might.

  “I know how you feel about the Trust,” Ben said. “Knowing Crowder is out there makes me feel like there’s a target painted between my shoulder blades, but rest assured, there’s no way he will ever find Jamundi. Its sun is not even on any star charts; our hackers made sure of that. And in case one missing star was ever picked up by an eagle-eyed astronomer, they erased another hundred as well.”

  “I leave the altruism up to you, Commander Benjamin, but thank you for your reassurances. We had a council meeting and the area of the compound is going to be kept as a peace garden as a memorial to those poor people. Thank you for the list of names.”

  “We have their DNA records and their ashes will be repatriated. We’ll find a way to do it.”

  “How will you examine the survivors?”

  “Ronan Wolf is highly skilled in psychological regression. We know the Nimbus swallowed Kitty Keely, so we’ll start with her. David Cho, second in command of the Barbary also survived. We’ll take them both to Crossways and observe them carefully.”

  “And the rest of them?”

  “Another round of interviews, but then we’ll put them into cryo and ship them off to the Monitors with as much information as we have.”

  “Can you deal with the Monitors without getting captured yourselves?”

  “I have a contact who will cut me some slack if I’m being useful.”

  “Good luck, Commander Benjamin.”

  The interviews took three days, by which time Jake had collected cryo pods from Crossways and returned with all the equipment Ronan and the med-techs needed to freeze the survivors.

  Ben asked Cara to contact Jess Jessop, whose first comment after a string of expletives was to say: *You want what?*

  *I want you to collect fifty-one cryo pods from Mirrimar-6. I think you’ll find them very interesting.*

  *How am I supposed to account for them?*

  *A tip-off.* Ben laughed.

  *Some tip-off. I’ll tell you what; make it Mirrimar-10, which we’re due to check into in four days’ time. That will make more sense to my bosses.*

  *Mirrimar-10, it is. I’ll rent a warehouse under an alias and send you the details.*

  *So are you going to give me a clue?*

  *We had a warning about a shipload of refugees landing on one of our protectorate planets. We arrived before anything kicked off and corralled them. They appeared perfectly normal at first—that is if you consider that some of them went missing sixty years ago and others barely a year. We kept them in a compound rather than making the mistake of giving them access to the colony. It’s as well we did.*

  He gave Jess a rundown of what happened.

  *And now you’re dumping the problem on us.*

  *Not so much a problem, more an opportunity to do some research. Besides, I figure you can deal with them better than we can—more humanely at least. They have the potential to be dangerous, but I doubt it’s their fault.*

  Ben sent Jake and a small crew of Tengue’s mercs to deposit the cryo pods in storage on Mirrimar-10, a small hub near Cygnus Alpha.

  Naomi Patel took temporary command of the Barbary. She’d have to travel to Crossways via the nearest jump gates, so it would take her close to eighteen days allowing for sublight travel time.

  Ben took Kitty Keely and David Cho in Solar Wind. Ronan had charge of them in sick bay, each one mildly sedated and secured to a contour couch. To be safe, Ben stationed four guards outside the door.

  He watched the Barbary claw its way into the air and up into the stratosphere and then turned to say good-bye to his family.

  “It was good to see you, brother.” Rion clapped him on the back of the shoulder in that awkward way brothers have. Kai shook hands like the man he’d become, and Thea, almost too round in the belly to reach, stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek.

  “If it’s a boy, we’re going to call him Robert like your dad,” she said. “And if it’s a g
irl, she’ll be Anju like your mother.”

  “That’s good to know. I hope Nan didn’t twist your arm in the matter of names.”

  “No, it was my idea.”

  “You’re a star, Thea,” Ben murmured. “Look after the boys—and I include Rion in that.”

  “I will, Uncle Ben.”

  Then it was Nan’s turn.

  “Are you sure you won’t come with us, Nan?”

  “I’m going to stick around here for a while, at least until Thea pops out the next generation of Benjamins. Call me if you need a negotiator.”

  “You’ll be the first person I’ll call.”

  “Can I come with you, Uncle Ben?” Ricky asked. “I won’t get in the way, promise.”

  “I know you won’t, Ricky, but your Nan has an advanced course in mathematics for you to study. If you want your pilot’s ticket someday, better do the groundwork.”

  “She says I have to do history as well.”

  “Psi-techs have to have a good background in all the major subjects,” Ben said. “Jussaro gave you the green light for an implant as soon as you turn fifteen.”

  “I have to wait that long?”

  “Two years is not a long time. Pass all your courses with good grades and we’ll ask for another assessment when you’re fourteen.”

  “Oh, wow!”

  “If your dad agrees.” Ben grinned at Ricky’s expression. “Better do all your chores on the farm, so he knows how responsible you can be.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Good man.”

  Ben swore he could still see Ricky’s smile from orbit as Solar Wind climbed into the black.

  “Are you going to bring Ricky into the Free Company?” Cara asked as Ben prepped for jumping into the Folds.

  “I doubt I’ll have much choice. He can’t stay on Jamundi if he gets an implant, and Rion won’t want him rattling around the galaxy on his own. Do you mind?”

  “No. He’s a good kid. Pretty grown up for his age.”

  “Except when he’s not.”

  “He’s a Benjamin. He’ll get there in the end.”

  “Ready for foldspace jump,” Ben said.