Nimbus

by Jacey Bedford

  “Three minutes,” Yan calls.

  The void dragon shrinks down to a size to fit the flight deck and looms over the doctor’s equipment.

  “It’s right here,” Ronan whispers.

  “Damn! I hoped I’d be able to see it.”

  The void dragon turns to Ben and asks *?*

  “Scientific study.” Ben says the words as well as puts them into the forefront of his mind.

  Cara’s not sure whether the void dragon has any frame of reference for either Doctor Beckham’s equipment or its purpose.

  OLIVIA MAY MARLING, the void dragon says.

  An image develops in the gestalt mind. Red One. Dido Kennedy’s chaotic workshop. A hastily rigged controller to the jump drive Kennedy has built into the station. Ben’s flying the whole thing through the Folds, out of danger from the combined fleets of four megacorps and into the middle of the battle taking place over Olyanda. The Trust fleet versus Oleg Staple’s defense force.

  Only now it’s from the void dragon’s viewpoint. Cara sees Ben sink to his knees, desperately holding on to the path to fly the station through and out the other side. Then Cara sees herself hugging Ben from behind. She remembers that moment. She was pouring in all the energy she could spare into him.

  Gen has just given birth. She huddles next to Max who is holding his daughter, as yet unnamed. Max doesn’t flinch from the void dragon. Cara’s not sure if he can see it. The dragon homes in on the baby, the unformed human mind open to so many possibilities, and plants—what?

  A seed of understanding.

  The void dragon tells the baby in thoughts if not actual words, *Cherished/beloved.*

  And the tiny newborn understands.

  “Four minutes,” Yan calls.

  OLIVIA MAY MARLING, the void dragon says. And they all get a strong impression of place which translates as, BRING HER HERE.

  Suddenly the temperature on the flight deck drops. Oh, that can’t be good. The otter-kind swirl around each other and dive through the bulkhead, leaving no trace. The void dragon stiffens and jerks to one side.

  Hanging about two meters in the air in the center of the flight deck is a small dark ball of swirling cloud. A line of ice shoots down Cara’s spine and she wants to throw up. No—she wants to run away screaming and then she wants to throw up. She fights the urge to bolt down the access tube.

  She struggles to hold the gestalt together.

  She can feel Ben fighting down panic, but he keeps his voice even. “Keep your equipment running, Doctor,” he says, bringing the jump engines on line.

  “What’s that?” Doctor Beckham asks. “Good God! What the hell is it?”

  “It’s the Nimbus. Small, but growing,” Ben says. “You can see it?”

  “I can see it,” Yan says, who has never seen a void dragon in his life.

  “Oh, yes.” Doctor Beckham breathes. “Though I wish I couldn’t. Is this what you meant? About the scary things?”

  “This is orders of magnitude worse than the void dragons,” Ronan says, still managing to sound calm. “Ben, are we getting out of here anytime soon?”

  Ben’s holding the line. Cara doubts he’s as calm as he sounds. “You are recording everything, aren’t you, Doctor Beckham?”

  “Yes. Can we go now?”

  “Cara?”

  “The rest of the ship is clear.”

  “Five minutes,” Yan calls.

  “What is it?” Ben asks the void dragon. *?*

  EXPLOSION, the void dragon says, and dives through the floor plates.

  It’s the only word it has for something that’s not good.

  They exit foldspace. The Nimbus vanishes.

  • • •

  Cara held her head in her hands.

  “Are you all right?” Ben asked.

  “No, I’m not all right. I’m about to start giving Garrick nightmares. Couldn’t you get out any faster than that?”

  “I wanted to give Doctor Beckham’s equipment as long as I could.”

  “I’d have settled for less,” Doctor Beckham said, “though the rational scientist part of me says I should have stayed longer, recorded more.”

  “How soon before you find out what you’ve got?” Ben asked.

  “I’ll start the analysis as soon as I get the equipment back to the lab, after I’ve changed my underpants.”

  “It’s real.” Christa Beckham’s voice rattled out over the comms feed to the apartment’s wall plate. Her face was pale, her hair mussed, and her eyes red-rimmed as if she’d been up working through the night. “Okay, I know you knew it was real, but my readings prove it. This is going to change the face of foldspace physics and the way they train Navigators. . . . I’m going to write a paper on it and maybe attend the conference in the—”

  Cara slid a mug of tea into Ben’s hands and a savory breakfast roll. She settled on a stool on the opposite side of the table with her own plate and mug, out of the range of the cam. She still had that hair-mussed-just-out-of bed look, even though she was up and dressed in a casual softsuit. Blue. Ben liked Cara in that particular shade of blue.

  He huffed out a breath and dragged his thoughts away from Cara and the way the softsuit draped over her trim figure.

  “Whoa, Doctor Beckham. Take a breath,” Ben said. “Start again.”

  “Okay, okay. The readings prove, without a doubt, that there’s something in foldspace.”

  Ben took a deep breath. In his head, he did a huge air punch. Yes! He’d been sure all along they existed, yet doubtful that Doctor Beckham’s equipment could measure what he’d experienced.

  She was already continuing. “You’re quite right; the cameras don’t record an image, though there’s some distortion around where the image should be. If I combine it with the temperature readings and thermal imaging, plus the tiny ripple in spacetime it creates—”

  “It creates a ripple in spacetime?”

  “That’s what I said. So if I combine all those together and push them through an imaging system, we get this.” She flashed an image on to the screen which looked like a void dragon drawn as a negative image. Some of the detail was absent, but it was quite clearly dragon-shaped.

  “How do you like that?” Beckham asked.

  Cara leaned across the table and squeezed his buddysuited forearm. He covered her fingers with his own.

  Ben grinned. “I like it very well. And the little critters?”

  “Not quite otters, though I can see why that’s where your mind takes you.”

  “Jake calls them snakes.”

  “That, too.” She flicked a second enhanced image on the screen which showed two amorphous blobs changing shape as they moved like a murmuration of starlings: now long and lean, now wide and globular.

  “I’m not actually sure these are single creatures. I think they could be a cooperative flock of something much smaller. Look . . .” As the otter-kind passed out of the flight deck, they appeared to shatter into thousands of tiny pieces the instant before they disappeared.

  “But the void dragon doesn’t do that?”

  “No, but it doesn’t conserve its own mass when it reduces in size to fit into the available space in the flight deck.”

  “And what about . . . the other thing, the developing Nimbus.”

  “We only recorded a few seconds of it. It’s a pity we couldn’t get more data to see how it grew . . .”

  “Trust me, it isn’t. Did it register?”

  “In a way.”

  “In what kind of way?”

  “There was a complete absence of reading, not even any kind of cosmic background. It was the very definition of nothing.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  OLIVIA

  CARA SAW THE SCIENTIST’S IMAGE FADE FROM the screen. “Well, they can’t deny the existence of foldspace creatures now
,” she said. “Christa Beckham’s a respected scientist. If she publishes a paper on this, it has to change the way everyone trains their Navigators. It’s going to have huge repercussions. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? It’s your moment. Everything you’ve said—theorized about—proven.” She squeezed his arm again.

  Ben nodded, but Cara could tell he was already thinking ahead, maybe about something else entirely.

  “While we were in the Folds, the void dragon put something into my mind that I’ve been trying not to think about.” He massaged his forehead with the tips of three fingers. “It asked for Olivia May Marling again, and then it showed me an image of Crossways’ jump through the Folds. I saw the whole thing from its perspective. While we were struggling to bring the station home, the void dragon was fascinated by the sudden appearance of a very new and unformed human mind.”

  “It wasn’t only you. We all saw it via the gestalt.”

  “You did?” Ben sounded relieved. “Then you can back me up. The void dragon gave the baby something—put something into her mind. I think Gen and Max’s baby is the key to communicating with the void dragon. That’s why it keeps asking for her.”

  “You want to take a baby into the Folds?”

  “No, I don’t, but I think we might have to.”

  “Who’s we? Don’t make me a part of this. I’m going to be on Gen’s side when she says a very firm no to the idea.”

  He huffed out a breath and stared into the distance for a while.

  “There’s something out there. Something that’s taking more and more ships in the Folds. And the people it’s taken are coming back and trying to kill us. If we have a chance of finding out what and why, shouldn’t we take it?”

  “Not if it means exposing a baby to the void dragon.”

  “Maybe with the right safeguards in place . . .” Ben stood up. “I’m going to talk to Gen and Max.”

  “No, Ben, you can’t. Ben. Ben!”

  But she was talking to empty air. He’d stalked out without a backward glance.

  Cara stood in stunned silence for a moment and then shoved her bare feet into her shoes, and raced after him, catching him at Gen and Max’s door.

  “Ben, this is unthinkable,” she said. “You can’t—”

  “Can’t what?” Max asked as he opened the door wide.

  Gen stood across the room with Liv on her hip, the toy dragon clutched in the child’s fingers.

  “Can I come in?” Ben glanced down at Cara. She felt as if he’d suddenly slapped her across the face and forced her away.

  “Can we both come in?” She pushed past Max and went to take up a position behind Gen.

  “What’s this all about?” Gen asked.

  “The void dragon and your daughter,” Ben said. “It’s asking for her.”

  Gen clasped the little girl tight.

  “When she was born, it gave her a gift. I think that gift is understanding. I think she can interpret what the void dragon is trying to communicate.”

  “You’re nuts,” Max said. “She’s barely eighteen months old.”

  “And already speaking in sentences.”

  “Short, simple ones.”

  “Shut up!” Gen yelled. She lowered her voice once she had their attention. “You can argue all you like over what she can and can’t do, but I’m her mother and she’s not going into foldspace. Not for any reason whatsoever, especially to talk to a void dragon.”

  “I’m with Gen,” Cara said, putting one hand on her friend’s shoulder. “It’s too much to ask. The risks . . .”

  Ben closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I know, I know, but unless we find out what’s going on, we’re going to lose more and more ships and colonies. Thousands of people. The void dragon is trying to tell us something, and Liv could be the only one who can translate it.”

  Max and Gen stood intransigent, and Cara couldn’t blame them.

  “We’ll take every precaution,” Ben said. “We’ll have a full crew, including Ronan, and a backup jumpship pilot. Gen, you could even do that yourself, so you could bring us out of the Folds at any time. You’ve flown Solar Wind often enough.”

  Gen growled—actually growled. Her voice came out low and raspy. “I don’t know you anymore, Ben Benjamin. Get out of here. Now!”

  Max inserted himself between his family and Ben, going toe to toe. “You heard Gen. I may not be much of a fighter, but so help me if you come near my daughter I’ll punch your teeth down your throat. Leave now, and don’t come back!”

  Ben pressed his lips together, turned on his heel and left, his shield so tight that Cara didn’t know what he was thinking.

  Max slammed the door behind him and leaned against it.

  “Are you all right?” Cara asked Gen.

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. I’m shaking like a leaf. How could he—”

  Max moved in to put one arm round Gen and by default, Liv. “Thanks for the backup,” he said to Cara. “I thought you’d support him.”

  She shook her head. “Not on this.”

  Gen gave her a wan half smile. “Yes, thank you.”

  “He’s suggested we should have children,” Cara said. “I’m not sure I could trust him after this. He’s normally so . . . so Ben. Always doing what’s best for people. Compassionate, even. And yet . . . I know he’s desperate to find out what’s going on in foldspace. Colonies are being destroyed. People are dying, and he thinks it’s his job to stop it. But since the void dragons have been making an appearance regularly, and then the Nimbus, and all the dreams . . . Did you know he’s been having nightmares every night for over a year? And they’re not even his. They’re Garrick’s nightmares—somehow we share them.”

  “But Garrick’s not psi.” Gen’s alarm showed on her face.

  “No, but he is the one who’s come closest to the Nimbus and lived.”

  Liv began to wriggle. When Gen put her down, the child stomped off into the middle of the floor. “Want to talk to dragon,” she said. *Uncle Ben, want to talk to dragon!*

  “Sweetheart, the void dragon is a toy. It’s a story.” Gen knelt beside the child and offered her a furry kitten made from marmalade-colored fur with tufted ears and a tiger-striped tail. She looked up at Cara. “Ever since her first words she’s insisted there’s someone in her head. Then it came out that it was a dragon. I made her the toy thinking she’d transfer the idea to something she could touch, but she knows. She hears the void dragon. How can that be? It’s not even in the same dimension.”

  “No.” Liv batted the kitten to the floor and clutched the void dragon toy to her chest. “I remember.”

  “How can you remember, sweetie, you were a newborn?”

  “I was new and there was a dragon.”

  *Tell her no,* Max said.

  *We said we’d never lie to her.*

  “Tell me,” Liv said.

  “It was a special time.” Gen adopted her Mummy-to-child-soothing-voice. “The station—all of it—flew through the Folds.”

  “That’s where the dragon lives.”

  “That’s right. And while the station was there—”

  “With Uncle Ben.”

  “Yes, with Uncle Ben.”

  “I saw a dragon.”

  “I’m not sure you could have seen it. You were busy coming out of Mummy’s tummy.”

  “It came to visit.”

  “It did.”

  “It had a beard with . . .” She flexed her fingers into claws. “And they moved.” She rubbed her toy dragon’s chin, devoid of prehensile strands of beard.

  “Claws in its beard?” Max asked. “Have you ever told her that? Is that even a thing?”

  “I might have.”

  “Well, I didn’t know about it.”

  *The dragon has a wavy beard. Want to see dragon!* Liv broadcast loud
enough to be heard throughout Blue Seven. *Want to go with Uncle Ben to see the dragon.*

  The door opened without a warning knock. Ben stood in the doorway, his face deadly serious.

  “Uncle Ben!” Liv scampered toward him holding out her arms wide. He scooped her up in his left arm, drew a pistol, and shot Gen first and then Max.

  Cara stood stunned for vital seconds.

  “Soft stun bolts,” Ben said. “They’ll be all right.”

  “You’ve taken their daughter. They’ll never be all right again.”

  “I’ll bring her back safely. I swear it.”

  “And what if you can’t?”

  “I will. Come with us.”

  “You can’t do this.” She took three steps toward Ben before he squeezed the trigger again and everything went black.

  Ben hadn’t known he was capable of kidnapping a toddler and shooting his best friends until he heard Liv’s cry: *Uncle Ben, want to talk to dragon!*

  But he had known Liv was the key to all this. She could talk to the void dragon. Gods, he wished things hadn’t come to a head right now while the child was so small, but people were dying—thousands of them. Weighing the risk to one child against the slaughter of whole colonies, surely he was right to do this?

  But Liv was an innocent. Gen and Max were his best friends. They didn’t deserve this. And neither did Cara.

  Cara.

  He’d stunned her alongside Gen and Max, firstly because she could alert the whole station to what he was doing, but secondly, and perhaps most importantly, because it would protect her from the backlash. This was his decision, and he would bear the cost of it alone.

  He flashed a command to Yan Gwenn to prepare the Solar Wind for a fast exit with a full engineering crew, then alerted Ronan, Naomi Patel, and Lynda Munene. Finally, he borrowed Gwala and Hilde—Gwala for his prowess at the tactical station and Hilde in the hopes that she could babysit Liv while he flew them into foldspace.

  No one asked him any questions as he strode out of Blue Seven with the child in his arms, who was obviously delighted to be going for an outing. He’d told her Mummy and Daddy were sleeping—which was the truth, though they’d wake with murderous headaches and probably murderous intent.