*You want us to take out the gates or join in the scrap?* Ben asked.
*Gates, please. Stop any more ships from coming through.*
There were two parts to a gate, the larger crew quarters, built around the control center, and the smaller impeller unit. The impeller orbited the gently rotating crew quarters, so every few minutes the gate, a hole in spacetime, came around to present a perfect oval of blackness, darker than the deepest black.
“Lynda, hail the crew.”
There should have been a crew of six, but no one was replying.
“There’s an active beacon,” Lynda said. “The crew have abandoned the gate.”
“That makes our job easier.” Ben made a mental note to check for escape pod beacons as soon as he could. “Tactical one, target the impeller. Tactical two, impeller first, but when the impeller goes, you can blow the crew quarters for good measure.”
Caleb didn’t waste any time. He hit the impeller with a DEW, a directed energy weapon. There was no dramatic flare or explosion. The unmanned impeller didn’t have atmosphere, so there was nothing to burn up, but what was solid and boxy suddenly wasn’t there anymore. The debris field was spreading away from them. Jo followed with a DEW to the crew quarters. This time there was a brief flare as residual oxygen consumed itself.
*One down. Four to go, Solar Wind,* Howling Wolf’s Telepath said. *Thanks for that.*
“Incoming,” Rory said, an edge to his voice but no panic.
Two hard-shell missiles had locked on.
*Foldspace,* Ben said.
• • •
They are back in black, the missiles probably heading for deep space, suddenly bereft of a target. Ben finds the line to another gate. Until they arrive, he doesn’t know whether it will be empty or the center of the Nimbus attack.
It’s empty.
If they blow it from foldspace, they can’t check for crew. Ben finds the line and they pop into realspace.
• • •
As before, the gate crew had already abandoned their positions. Ben gave Jo the first shot this time and she destroyed the impeller with one burst, leaving Caleb to blow the crew quarters. The gate was even more remote from the action. They slid into the Folds. The third gate was a repeat performance.
• • •
“I hope they’re all as easy as that,” Caleb says.
Ben winces. He’s not superstitious, but it’s probably better not to tempt providence. The line to the fourth gate is lit by platinum waste sparkling like tiny ice crystals in a mountain sunrise. Ben follows it and stays in the Folds.
“You shouldn’t have spoken,” Lynda tells Caleb.
“Shi-it . . .” Rory stares at the screen. “Is that what I think it is?”
The blackness roils around a ship that Ben recognizes from the flight plans the Monitors forwarded. It’s one of the missing ships, a freighter carrying soy protein intended for the Pinch Point Station commissary. At least it’s not equipped with weapons. There’s not much the Nimbus can do with soy except feed them all to death. The ship has, or maybe by now “had,” a crew of five.
Two ships are poised to exit foldspace via the gates.
“Chloe, can you—”
“Checking,” Chloe says.
She has the master list of all ships ever reported lost in the Folds.
“The far one is the Princess Elizabeth, an Earth ship lost in the Folds eleven years ago. She’s armed, but not heavily. The near one is the Cotton. There’s no record of loss in the Folds.”
“Oh, take my word for it, she was lost. We practically gave her to the Nimbus. Ilsa Marquat and James Beech on board. I never forget the name of murderers.”
“Murderer?” Chloe asks.
“They killed an elderly lady called Ully. She was a class one, long-distance Telepath who worked with Mother Ramona Delgath. She was kidnapped when Garrick eliminated Roxburgh. Roxburgh had her taken care of.”
“By Ilsa Marquat and James Beech?” Chloe asks.
Ben nods. “We didn’t get much time to examine the ship, but she was one of Roxburgh’s, so you can take nasty surprises for granted.”
There’s another ship caught in some kind of web. Strands of darkness wrap around it like bindweed and two smaller nimbuses hover to either side.
“It’s one of the three that filed flight plans shortly before the attack,” Chloe says. “Passenger vessel Dog Rose, carrying a change of crew for Pinch Point Station. A hundred and twenty on board. Technicians and their families.”
“Damn. We can’t just leave her and hit the gate,” Ben says.
“Can we swing—oh!” Tam says as realization dawns. “You’re that Benjamin, aren’t you? The one the Benjamin Maneuver was named after.”
“I doubt I was the first.”
“Well, you’re the one that stuck.”
When Ben had accidentally dragged another ship into foldspace by making the jump when it was too close, he’d learned about dragging ships in and out of the Folds by swinging them through on his coattails. Get close enough, make the jump and you either did, or did not, have the other ship with you when you emerged. There was no second try. It was either total success, or the ship was lost forever. Someone had tried it, unsuccessfully, with one of the fleet ships stranded when Ben stole the jump gate. The result of that was one of the reasons why they were still making their way home the slow way.
The Nimbus moves on. There’s a black-wrapped cocoon left behind.
“I guess that answers the question of what happens to them between being taken and reemerging,” Ben says. “Some kind of suspended animation.”
“The Dog Rose hasn’t been processed yet.” Chloe’s knuckles have gone white as she grips the arms of her chair.
“No, it hasn’t.”
Ben edges the Solar Wind toward the Nimbuses. “A dragon told me there were many Nimbuses, but only one mind. I think it’s a hive-mind creature. We need to keep it focused on the Dog Rose and not on us. Lynda, use mechanical comms to—”
“Dog Rose, this is Solar Wind, can you answer? Come in, Dog Rose.” Lynda was ahead of him.
She repeated three times before the comm crackled to life. “Solar Wind. If you’re still able, get out while the getting is good.”
“Stand by, Dog Rose,” Ben said. “Going to try and take you with us. Can you cause a distraction?”
“We’re in chains here—or something very like.”
“Try and buck your way out of them, forward and reverse, roll and spin. Be random. Make them work to keep you.”
“Keeping us isn’t a problem.”
“It will be in a minute. Keep it up until you get my word, then close down all your drives.”
Ben hopes the jump gate crew have abandoned their station like the others. He’s going to have to destroy the gate from the inside before those two ships go through to support the Star of India. Potentially six people in the gate and a hundred and twenty on the Dog Rose. It’s a numbers game, but still one he doesn’t like playing.
“Caleb, Jo, on my mark, go for the jump gate with DEWs and with hard shells.”
“Right, Boss,” Caleb says.
Ben swoops Solar Wind from above the Nimbus, skims the edges of it and points his nose at the gate as if he’s making a run for it, or perhaps aiming for the two ships waiting to go through. The Princess Elizabeth begins evasive action. The Cotton, smaller and more nimble, pulls up in a loop from a standing start and rolls out at the top.
“Mark.”
The shots fly between the Elizabeth and the Cotton. The gate disintegrates. Ben activates the forward defense screen, good for maybe only one or two critical uses before it needs recharging, but if ever there’s a time, it’s now. He flies straight at the debris cloud that marks the remains of the gate. Luckily, most of it is traveling in the same direction, not coming
at him and testing the ship’s shields to the limit.
There’s no up or down in space, but relative to Solar Wind the Cotton is above, probably priming weapons. Ben flies an evasive helix and pulls around into a barrel roll. The rules for aerial combat were laid down more than five hundred years ago, but in Earth’s atmosphere where gravity, thrust-to-weight ratio, wing loading, and turn radius were all considerations. In space, the calculations are different, though the maneuvers might look similar. The objective is exactly the same, however. Shoot the bastard before he can shoot you. The best kills are the ones where your enemy doesn’t even see you coming.
No chance of that with the Cotton. She’s small and turns on a button. Her pilot, James Beech, is good. Ben leads her away from the Nimbus, puts on a burst of speed, pops out of foldspace and back in again, and he’s on the Cotton’s tail.
“Mark.”
The Cotton takes a DEW to her main drive and begins to spin.
“Finish her,” Ben says. There isn’t any alternative.
“Damage report,” Lynda asks.
“Deflector screen down to twenty-five percent capacity,” Dobson says.
“Can you eject platinum?” Ben asks.
“Yes. But . . .”
“How much do we have to spare and still get home?”
“Theoretically, we can get home on one rod, but if we keep two, we can lose four.”
“Can you break up the rods and spray a wide swath?”
“How long have I got?” Dobson asked.
“Yesterday will do fine.”
There’s a pause. “I can mist it into the water tanks and jettison it. It’s going to take a lot of cleaning out when we get home, though.”
If we get home, Ben thinks. “Do it.” The Nimbus is sensitive to it. It might give us an edge.
He sweeps Solar Wind around and dives for the Nimbus. “Ready, Dobson?”
“Ready, Boss.”
“Let it go.”
As Solar Wind flashes past the Nimbus, Dobson releases the platinum. The burst doesn’t last long, but it’s enough to cover the Nimbus itself and the last dregs of it sprinkle across the two smaller Nimbuses that have the creeper-vine things around Dog Rose, which has, true to instructions, been thrashing back and forth against its bonds.
The Nimbus contracts and stiffens.
“Dog Rose, desist now,” Ben says. The transport stops thrashing around. Ben swings in close, then closer still, activates the jump drive, and swings the Dog Rose out of the Folds with the two small Nimbuses still attached.
Ben fancies he can hear an unearthly scream, but whether it’s pain, anger, or frustration, he simply doesn’t know.
• • •
They arrived in realspace exposed to crossfire. The Nimbuses didn’t make the transition.
“The shield’s down,” Dobson said as Solar Wind caught the edge of a blow meant for the Star of India.
“Jeeze, Benjamin. Look out!”
“Sorry, Howling Wolf. We have a bit of a situation here. Can you take Dog Rose and keep her safe? One more gate to close down and we need to get to it before the Nimbus does.”
“We have her,” Washington said. “Thanks, Benjamin.”
“Yes, thanks,” Dog Rose’s comms guy said. “We owe you one.”
Ben left Lynda to reply.
One more gate. He wanted to see how this would affect the Star of India. The Nimbus had been close. How close did it have to be? Was there any kind of telepathic link between the Nimbus and the crew? Would closing down the immediate jump gates break the connection?
“How are we doing, Rory?” Ben asked.
“Systems are functioning within normal parameters, considering we have no water on board, and we’re down to one and a half platinum rods. She’ll hold.”
“Lynda?”
“Fine, Boss.”
“Caleb? Jo?”
“Holding up, Boss,” Jo said. “Though my gut is telling me to throw up.”
“One more gate, and then you can throw up to your heart’s content. You’re doing well, all of you.” He glanced at Tam and Chloe and nodded.
The last gate loomed before them, but Star of India had spotted their direction and had broken away from the Howling Wolf to follow. Ben flew evasive patterns, randomly twisting and turning to avoid DEWs, which flared past and were gone.
“Caleb, Jo, fire on the gate as your weapons come to bear. I’ll give you as much stability as I can.”
Ben saw two hard shells stream away in front of them. The gate boiled away into nothingness.
Something clipped them and sent them spinning, the spin fighting against their own grav. Connected into the ship’s systems, Ben felt an almighty blow land inside his head and everything went black.
Ben’s hurt. Ben’s hurt.
It was all Cara could think of as she rushed to the infirmary. She was relieved to find him sitting in a treatment chair while Ronan ran a portable scanner over his skull, then checked his eyes with a light.
She glanced at Ronan. *Is he all right?* she asked on a tight band.
*Nothing that a good sleep won’t cure,* Ronan replied.
Ben looked from one to the other. “Are you two talking about me?”
“What gave you that idea?” Cara asked.
“You’re here, for a start.”
She frowned. Busted. “What happened?”
“Caught the edge of a DEW. The surge knocked me and Tamara out, but Chloe Durand flew us home. Keeping a pilot unconnected to anything except the straps in her chair is a good idea. Remind me to do it again if we ever have enough pilots to spare.”
“Pinch Point?”
He shook his head and then winced. “Everyone lost. The Star of India was packing some serious weaponry, but we closed the gates to stop further losses.”
“According to Oleg Staple, after you closed the last gate, Star of India wallowed for long enough for all three ships to get a lock on her. She’s nothing but debris now.”
“That’s almost a shame,” Ben said.
“How do you mean?”
“I thought she might lose her connection to the Nimbus completely. She might have, of course, but we’ll never know.”
“I guess no one could take that chance.”
Ben eased himself out of the treatment chair. “Thanks, Ronan. Is Tamara all right?”
“Same as you. I’ve sent her to sleep it off. I suggest you do the same.”
“I will.” He rubbed his eyes.
“Don’t stop to check messages on the way or take any calls from Garrick. Doctor’s orders.”
“Right.”
“I mean it.”
“Right. I said right, didn’t I?”
Ronan looked at Cara who produced a damping pin. “What everyone needs for a good night’s sleep.”
Ben followed Cara out on to the concourse.
“One message I will give you,” she said. “Kai sent to say congratulations you’re a great-uncle. Thea has had a boy. Mother and baby both doing well, and they’re calling him Robert, though both of them admit he’s been Baby Bobby, so far.”
Ben grinned. “Baby Bobby Benjamin. I like it. So does that mean Nan’s available for negotiations?”
“It does. She says she has a contact on Earth. Do you suppose that might be your grandfather she’s talking about?”
“He’s already keeping tabs on Crowder on our behalf. Did you see the way her eyes lit up when she talked about Grandfather?”
Cara smiled. “She still loves him after all these years.”
“It’s not something you can switch off at will, you know.”
Cara did know. She cleared her throat and turned away so he wouldn’t see the confusion in her eyes.
Chapter Forty-Eight
MEETING
THE BOARDROOM AT THE TOP OF THE TRUST Tower was crammed with extra seats around the table. Tori LeBon had called the meeting. She’d invited representatives from the Monitors, the Five Power Alliance on Earth, and the Independent Protectorate of Planets. Crowder understood the IPP were more colloquially the Crossways Protectorate, which made his skin crawl.
He felt as though he had a target painted between his shoulder blades. Bad blood didn’t begin to cover it.
This was a civilized political meeting. The representative from Crossways would be a talker, not an assassin. Of course, there was no reason why he couldn’t be both. It certainly wouldn’t be Benjamin, now with all the charges still to answer and the Monitors crawling all over the place.
As his elevator reached the top of the tower, he could see through the clear walls that a number of people were gathered and milling around with refreshments. A young African was standing in the lift lobby, handing out expensive looking conference packs with wafer screens and a number of datacrystals as well as a scribble pad and stylus.
All the board members were here. Though called at short notice, it had sounded urgent enough to bring Isaac Whittle back from where he’d been vacationing in the ice fields of Venezuela.
The representatives were all on the far side of the room, talking to Tori Le Bon. Was that good or bad? He recognized the tall man as Commissioner Sebastian Rodriguez of the Monitors, but didn’t know the woman who was with him.
Oh, shit! The FPA rep was Malusi Duma. For someone who was supposed to be retiring from politics, he was more active than ever before. Why did Crowder get the impression that whenever Duma had dealings with the Trust it was almost personal? There was a woman standing with her back to him: tall, straight, and gray-haired. She was comfortably close to Duma and their body language said they knew each other well. Maybe the FPA had sent two delegates and the Independent rep wasn’t here yet.
He took the pack from the young man and was about to thread his way through the room to see if he could muscle in on Tori LeBon’s conversation, when she clapped her hands and invited everyone to take their seats. Isaac Whittle made small talk on the way into the boardroom. When everyone had been seated, Crowder found himself staring into the eyes of Louisa Benjamin, three meters away across the round table.
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