Nimbus
Page 56
“You know I will.”
“And keep a look out for Sanctuary as well,” Cara added.
“Jussaro’s a big boy. He can look after himself.” Her face softened. “You know I’ll do that, too.”
“I know.”
“Not that I’ll have to.”
“Of course not,” Ben said. “We’ll be back by suppertime.”
“You’d better be.”
Jake joined them, and finally Ronan and Syke with Kitty. She didn’t appear to be in homicidal maniac mode, which could only be good. Perhaps now she was finally getting her wish, she had decided to cooperate.
They met Garrick and Mother Ramona in Port 46. Ben guessed Garrick would have preferred Mother Ramona to remain safe at home, too, but there was little chance of that. Sometimes you had to roll with people’s choices.
Climbing up to the flight deck, he was surprised to find Gwala already at the main tactical station.
“Hilde’s as mad as blazes that she’s not fit enough for duty yet,” Gwala said.
“How is she?” Ben asked.
“She says her wounds itch, which is a good sign, and she’s cranky.”
“That’s a good sign, too.”
“I hope so. I’m not sure how much more crank I can take.”
“As much as she needs you to, I guess. Thanks for coming, Gwala.”
“All part of the job.”
They all fit somehow: Cara on comms, Jake on systems, Mother Ramona in the spare tactical seat, with strict instructions from Gwala not to touch anything; Garrick in the little-used engineering station—little-used because Dobson was, as usual, down in engineering, preferring the hands-on approach. Ronan and Kitty took the two bucket seats. Syke settled on the floor next to her.
Ben slid into the pilot’s chair, placed his hands on the controls, and linked into the ship’s navigation systems. Solar Wind lifted on her antigravs and slid gracefully away, down the glideway into space. On precisely the hundred-klick mark, Ben popped them into the Folds.
• • •
“What now?” Garrick asks. “How do we find the Nimbus?”
“With Kitty on board, I think it will find us,” Ben says.
“One minute,” Jake calls.
“Is that all?” Cara says. “It feels like hours already.”
A form swirls through the bulkhead.
“There’s a void dragon here,” Ronan says for everyone who can’t see it.
The void dragon curls its sinewy shape around the pilot’s chair and concentrates on Ben.
OLIVIA MAY MARLING, it says.
“Not this time,” Ben tells it.
EXPLOSION.
“I hope not. We’re going to talk to the Nimbus.”
NIMBUS.
The void dragon shudders, but it doesn’t disappear. Instead, it shrinks down to the size of a large dog and curls up at Ben’s feet. It’s coming along for the ride. That’s unusual. In the past, it’s always preferred to stay away from the Nimbus.
“Two minutes,” Jake calls.
“I can hear it singing.” Kitty closes her eyes. “It’s beautiful.”
“Oh!” Garrick says. “That’s it. I can hear it, too.”
Mother Ramona stands and crosses over to him, both her hands resting on his shoulders as if she can hold him into his seat.
“Screens,” Ben says.
Jake spins the screens through all the available angles and then settles on one that has a darker shade of blackness. “Is that it?”
“Oh, yes,” Kitty almost breathes the words. “I should go.” She turns to Syke. “For what it’s worth, thank you.”
“You don’t have to go. Stay with me.” Syke’s voice comes out in a choking sob, but he swallows down the emotion. Though Ben sees his hand twitch toward Kitty, he doesn’t grab her.
She looks at him, face full of regret, maybe for something that might have been.
“Remember the message,” Ben says.
Kitty nods, bends her knees, and springs for the ceiling, floating as if there’s no gravity. She goes straight through. Everyone looks to the screen as her small form crosses foldspace. The Nimbus swells toward her and draws her into itself tenderly, like a lover.
“Is that all?” Syke asks.
“I don’t know whether we can expect more,” Ben says. “Kitty’s got what she wanted.”
Suddenly a tendril shoots out from the Nimbus faster than Ben would have believed possible and twists itself around Solar Wind.
“Oh, shit!” Jake speaks for all of them.
“No, no, no,” Garrick says.
Ben rolls the ship from side to side, up and down, back and forth like a bucking bronco trying to dislodge a rider.
Mother Ramona staggers and falls against Garrick who grabs her and drags her on to his knee. Syke drops into Kitty’s vacant seat.
Another tendril wraps around and joins the first. It catches Solar Wind and holds her tight. Her desperate movement slows. A darkness begins to form in the center of the flight deck, small as an eyeball at first, but growing until it’s the size of a human head.
Garrick sets Mother Ramona to one side and stands up.
“You. Have. No. Hold. Over. Me!”
She grabs his hand and pulls him back.
From being a formless blob, the shadow begins to shape itself until it’s a human head with a recognizable face.
Kitty.
WE UNDERSTAND.
The voice isn’t exactly Kitty’s, but it’s close enough.
WE WILL RETURN THEM.
The void dragon swirls around the space, grows to fit the flight deck and raises its head on its long neck and stares directly into the Nimbus’ eyes. It says nothing, but the Nimbus fades. In an instant the void dragon swells, bursts out of the flight deck into foldspace, coils around Solar Wind, and pulls her free of the Nimbus’ black tendrils.
GO, it says.
Ben doesn’t need telling twice. He finds the line and hits realspace. Glad to be alive.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
AFTERWORD
THE NIMBUS WAS AS GOOD AS ITS WORD.
One year and four months later, when most of the jump gates had been destroyed and levels of pollution in foldspace were beginning to fall, a ship came through one of the last remaining gates. The Monitors might have destroyed it out of hand, but it simply hung there, not making any attempt to evade them or to bring its weapons online. The comms operator identified the ship as the Konstantin and said they’d had a little trouble in the Folds.
Figuring this might be another ploy like the original refugee ships, the Monitors directed them to land on Butterstone, now deserted but still with all its facilities in place. Records showed the Konstantin to have been lost in the Folds fifty-six years earlier. Her passenger list of six hundred tallied exactly with the records on file. The pilot thought they’d had a rough crossing which had taken almost a day instead of the expected few minutes. He was astounded to discover they’d lost fifty-six years.
Though the passengers were in shock, they didn’t appear to be homicidal. These returnees didn’t have odd gaps in their memories, and after a suitable quarantine period, showed no signs of violent intent.
The Konstantin was soon joined by the Chandler, the Finton, the Ashelle, and the Gwillam. And that was only the start of it. There were civilian transports, military ones, cargo ships with their goods as fresh as if they’d never gone missing.
The task of sorting out the returnees fell to the Monitors. They headed a combined task force drawn from all the megacorps. Checking to see if the returnees had living relatives who were willing to take them in, or restore property and funds which had been distributed according to their wills, was a massive and ongoing task. The legal hot mess looked likely to keep a brigade of lawyers in work for decades.
Ben spent about half his time on Olyanda and half on Blue Seven, not always coinciding with Cara, as their duties sometimes dragged them in different directions, but they managed about two thirds of their time together. This was a good thing since they were now a family of four, the twins, Duncan and Kaitlin, having been born six months earlier.
Jake’s cousin Dree had inserted herself into the family as nanny, secretary, and trainee identity forger.
Ben concentrated on the Free Company, still resisting Garrick’s persistent attempts to inveigle him onto taking a more active role in the governance of Crossways. Their fleet of jumpships had grown and much of the Free Company work involved transporting goods and people between colonies, and assisting in task-force projects.
Ricky had his implant and was showing every sign of becoming a Navigator like his Uncle Ben. His father had given up trying to hold on to his strings and had willingly consigned him to Ben’s care for a three-year course at the University of Crossways on condition he returned to Jamundi for the long holidays. Nan always tried to make her visits coincide, but since Malusi had finally reduced his duties as outgoing president, they’d been making up for lost time visiting relatives, and finally managing to see the Ice Falls of Venezuela.
Dido Kennedy and Yan Gwenn hadn’t managed to solve the platinum problem, but Dido had added a component to the Mark III jump drive that reduced platinum emissions, coughing the residue into realspace after the jump instead of into foldspace, where at least there were no creatures—to their knowledge—allergic to it. She was now working on a method of catching and recycling it.
Everything was as it should be.
And then Cara received a call from Jess Jessop.
She was down on Olyanda, helping Jussaro with half a dozen psi-techs who’d found their way from one staging post to another, until they’d been picked up by Ben in Solar Wind and brought to Sanctuary.
She’d just completed a delicate alteration to a woman’s handpad to give her a new identity, when she felt a telepathic handshake she recognized.
*Hey, Cara, is Ben with you?*
*He’s up on Crossways, Jess. Are you coming to visit? We haven’t seen you since before the twins were born.*
*This is official business.*
*Should I be worried?*
*Not exactly.* Jess paused. *We’ve processed a new batch of returnees. Robert and Anju Benjamin, lately of Chenon, were on the passenger list. Would they happen to be any relation?*
*We’re on our way, Jess. See you soon.*
Cara could hardly believe it. Ben’s dream of rescuing his parents from the Folds had come true, if only by a roundabout route. It was . . . She took several deep breaths. Stupendous. Momentous. All those things and more.
Ben would be . . . what? Elated. Ecstatic . . . and probably scared shitless. Two people who’d meant so much, but whom he’d never known except as the perfect parents of his own personal legend.
The Benjamins would be expecting to find two children waiting for them. How would they take the news that they now had adults? Not only that, but they had grandchildren. Hell, they had great-grandchildren with Kai’s two, a girl, little Anju, having followed Baby Bobby Benjamin barely a year later. And both of Kai’s kids were named after the returnees. That could get confusing.
Cara swallowed hard. Names were going to be the least of their troubles. What if they didn’t get on? What if Robert and Anju Benjamin couldn’t readjust?
*Ben. Come and pick us up,* Cara said. *We need to get to Butterstone. Quickly! And send someone to Jamundi for Rion, Ricky, Kai and the family. Your parents have come back.*
She should have been able to sense what Ben was feeling, but he clamped down on his emotions. He arrived on the landing field, dropping Solar Wind neatly on her antigravs. Cara scooped up the twins, one in each arm, and hurried across.
Ben came down the ramp. He wasn’t hiding anything from her right now. Cara felt the full wash of hope, fear, excitement. She didn’t hesitate but ran toward him. He enfolded all three of them in his arms. She buried her face in his neck, and he hugged them all, laughing.
Ben took Kaitlin and settled her in one of the baby seats that had temporarily replaced the bucket seats. Cara strapped Duncan into the second one. They’d already decided to ignore the perceived wisdom about taking babies through the Folds, it being preferable to leaving them behind. Ben was always careful to do shallow, short jumps, however, to avoid unwise meetings with the void dragons. That would happen eventually, but not yet.
“Aren’t you scared?” Cara asked him as Solar Wind rose on her antigravs and then pointed her nose to the clouds and surged forward. “I’m petrified, and they’re not even my parents.”
“Is that why I feel as though I’m about to have a heart attack?” He laughed. “Yes, scared and delighted in equal measure. All sorts of things are churning through my mind. I’m older than my own father by a couple of years. And Rion is almost old enough to be his father. I don’t know how that will sit with my dad at all.”
“Nan will be the only one who relates to your parents in the same way. She’ll remember them both at the age they are now.”
“It’s all so complicated. I won’t blame them one bit for having a hard time adjusting.”
“How old were you when they were lost?”
“Rion was nine, I was six. He’ll have better memories than me. I’m not sure what I remember. Maybe my memories are only photographs mixed up with what Nan told me about them.”
He slipped into a silent reverie, but Cara wasn’t fooled. Although he looked calm, she could tell his thoughts were still churning.
Eventually, he took a deep breath. “Let’s take it as it comes. If they want to go back to the farm on Chenon, it’s vacant. And I checked, it wasn’t damaged in the Nimbus attack. Too far out of the way, I guess. Or if they prefer, there’s plenty of land on Jamundi and a whole family to help them break the ground.”
“What if they decide to have more children?”
His jaw dropped and his eyes widened.
“You said they’re still young.”
“Dad’s thirty-three and Mom’s thirty-one. They might want more children. Yes, why not? They’ve lost the two they had. Even though we’re not dead, we’re certainly not their boys anymore. How strange it will be.” He laughed. “Yes, I think we definitely need to take it as it comes.”
Cara fed the twins and changed their nappies while Ben made the approach to Butterstone. Then she strapped them in again for the actual landing.
Ben brought Solar Wind down on a new landing pad a few miles outside of Rhyber City. The Crossways Protectorate had sanctioned the empty colony’s use as one of the new staging points for returnees. Though many of the bewildered people were going back to their families or their original home planets, some had been cut adrift by time and were settling on Butterstone, taking advantage of the infrastructure already in place, though conscious of the reason it was a ghost town.
“I think they all know it could have been them sent to fight,” Jess said when he picked them all up from Solar Wind in a groundcar. Cara bundled the twins into the back and hooked their flight harnesses into the safety restraints before squeezing herself between them. Duncan beamed beatifically while Kaitlin wriggled and fussed, so Cara only had half her attention on the conversation between Ben and Jess.
“Are we sure it wasn’t?” Ben asked. “Some of the attackers found their way back to the Nimbus through the Folds.”
“If it was, their memories have been wiped very thoroughly. I think most of these returnees were in some sort of long-term storage for later use. None of them remembers anything after entering foldspace until they reappeared
a short time ago. Some have been missing for less than a year. It’s the long-term ones we’re worried for.”
“Like my parents.”
Cara saw Jess’ shoulders rise and fall. “They’ve all had the lectures, a reorientation course, and a session with a psychiatrist and a psychologist, but it won’t hit them until they see their families again—or not, as some of their families are long gone. Yours are lucky—well—for a certain definition of lucky, I guess. Here we are.”
Jess rolled the groundcar to a stop outside a modest house on the outskirts of town. “Just give me a call if you need a lift back to your ship.”
“I’m expecting Rion and the family sometime soon. Jake’s bringing them. I don’t know how long it will take Nan and Mkhulu to arrive.”
“Mkhulu?”
“Zulu for Grandfather. Malusi Duma.”
“Malusi Duma is your grandfather?”
Ben grinned. “I guess I didn’t make that clear.”
“No wonder— Oh, well played.”
“Make no mistake, he wouldn’t have backed me about closing the jump gates if he’d thought I was making a mistake, but he did know all of the details of Crowder’s dirty dealing, so he was already on my side when it came to the Trust. In fact, he’d been after them for tax evasion on behalf of the FPA for years. He’s retired now—officially—which means he’s enjoying sticking his nose into all sorts of dark corners and shining a little light where it’s needed.”
“And your Nan?”
“Still with him. They say they’re thinking of getting married. It’s only taken them most of a lifetime to get around to it.”
“Well, good for them.”
“I think we’re expected.” Cara interrupted. “I saw someone at the window. Here, Ben, take Kait. She’s being a little wrigglebottom.”
Cara handed Kait into Ben’s waiting arms and climbed out of the groundcar, reaching in for Duncan who waved his arms around and made experimental singing noises.
The front door opened, to reveal a couple standing in the doorway, hesitant smiles on their faces. Cara would have recognized Robert for a Benjamin anywhere. He was lighter-skinned than either Ben or Rion, but he had the same broad-shouldered, slim-hipped build and he still looked fit and outdoorsy. Well, that was only logical. According to his timeline he’d been heaving bales of hay around on the farm less than a couple of weeks ago. He looked like Malusi, she realized.