Empire of Dust

by Jacey Bedford

  She could have lost herself in her grandfather’s library. Perhaps she should have.

  “And your enemy is?”

  Her head began to ache even more and she frowned.

  “Someone you’d better not tangle with.”

  She was thankful he left it at that.

  • • •

  Cara insisted she could hold a triad with Crowder, so Ben figured the fastest way to get her to give in and rest was to let her try. If she couldn’t hack it as a Psi-1, it was better to find out now rather than later. Of course, he didn’t really know her, so if she was a crank, then letting her inside his head was going to be a big mistake, but even though he might be on the very low end of the telepathic scale, he had a strong grasp of mental shielding, and he was fairly sure he could shut her out if he needed to.

  He sat in the pilot’s seat again and let down his shields, then nodded. He felt her flow into his mind with no hint of the trauma she must be feeling. Her gentle self-assurance took him by surprise. Their touch, mind to mind, rocked him to his core. He connected with her in a way that he hadn’t before, even when they’d made love—had sex. He corrected his opinion of their coupling. She’d been lovely, but her heart hadn’t been in it. He felt her mind float through his. It wasn’t that she was rifling through memories; those things he wanted to keep private were still behind barriers, but the connection stripped away a layer of reserve, and there was only painful honesty between them.

  He suddenly knew her without knowing anything about her, and by the look in her eyes that knowing had surprised her, too. Maybe it was the developing concussion that had caused the deeper contact, but this was way more of an exchange than professional comm demanded.

  Whatever she was running from, she was honest—he was suddenly sure of that. He recognized integrity when he felt it.

  *All right?* he asked.

  She nodded.

  *Then connect me to Gabrius Crowder, on Chenon.*

  He felt her lift Crowder’s contact ID delicately from his mind and hold onto it until it became part of her. Brain and implant meshed. The boundary blurred. She aimed her thought into the blackness of space, across vast distances, through the weirdness of the Folds and into the atmosphere of an inhabited planet, mingling with the backwash transmissions of hundreds of psi-techs. She sought just one specific implant and he followed her, mind to mind. It was like riding the wind.

  Most execs had implants as an expensive courtesy. They came with the job along with health and dental plans and—for the lucky—a pension, but there was as much difference between a passive and a real psi-tech as there was between a deadhead and a passive. Passives were basic receivers without any of the true psi-tech skills. Money could buy an implant for receiving communications, but it couldn’t give the skills to use it actively.

  The skill to use an implant to transmit at Cara’s level was rare; more art than science, more aptitude than training. Ben knew instantly that she was a Psi-1.

  Her thought found its mark. Ben felt the slight hesitation as her implant offered Crowder’s a virtual handshake, and then he was in Crowder’s head with Cara holding the triad steady. Words and meanings flowed through her neural pathways.

  *Benjamin?* Crowder sounded exasperated. *Are you on your way back yet?*

  *Yes. Take it easy. Just hit a minor problem.* Ben flashed his location. *I need a favor. I need to bring in someone without going through official channels.*

  *If I asked why, would you tell me? It’s not one of your waifs and strays again, is it?*

  *She’s a Psi-1. Aren’t we short of Psi-1s for the Olyanda mission?*

  *We might be.* Crowder continued, *But I can’t circumvent Immigration, even for a Psi-1, even for the Olyanda mission. You’ve got all your old team, like I promised.*

  *What’s left of them.*

  There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, and Ben felt Cara’s half-question. A comm Telepath wasn’t supposed to listen to the conversation she facilitated, but the no eavesdropping rule had been made up by deadheads. It wasn’t that Telepaths couldn’t hear, it was mostly that they chose not to listen.

  He felt her pull back from interrupting, and the silence dropped between the two men like there was an elephant in the room. He suppressed a flare of bitterness.

  *Do your settlers know about Hera-3?* he asked.

  *Let’s not drag out all that again, Ben, not now. The investigation’s been shelved. Let it lie until a better time. Meanwhile I’ve got the Five Power Alliance screaming at me for a status report on Olyanda, and we need . . . you need . . . to move forward. You need to stay in the system because it’s the only way you’ll get to those responsible for Hera-3.*

  *Am I that transparent?*

  *Only to me. You know I’ll back you if you can find any more hard evidence. Trust me.*

  *Appreciated.*

  *I’ll see you here in four days.*

  *Four days, with or without a Psi-1 for the team.*

  *Don’t do anything stupid, Ben.*

  *As if . . . *

  “You heard all of that, I guess.” Ben turned to Cara, noting her eyes were slightly glassy.

  “You expected me not to listen?”

  “Of course not. How are you feeling?”

  “Like shit. I just want to go to sleep.”

  “I know you do. Try and stay awake for a bit longer. I want to be sure that when you sleep you are sleeping, not unconscious.”

  “Tell me about Hera-3.”

  “A straightforward colony setup mission, but we were hit by raiders. I lost a colony.”

  “Why?”

  “We had something they wanted.”

  He suspected that his regular reports to HQ had been leaked. The planet was lousy with platinum. Maybe it was his fault, maybe not. It made little difference to the weight of the dead he carried. He’d only brought home fifty-seven of his two-hundred-strong crew. The rest had either died in the first wave of airborne attacks or been killed trying to protect the surviving settlers. In the end he’d managed to lift fifteen hundred settlers off planet to safety—just fifteen hundred out of six thousand.

  “The Trust closed the case. I lost my rank, but Crowder kept me on in Special Ops, running surveys, checking on colonies.”

  “Crowder—do you trust him?”

  Ben didn’t even need to think about it. “Of course. He brought me into the Trust. He kept me in when things got rough. I’ve worked my way through the shit. Olyanda’s my first colony command since Hera-3.”

  “You’ve not closed the case, have you?”

  He shook his head. “Too many lives lost on my watch.”

  She subsided into silence. What was she thinking?

  At length she said, “Does it make you feel better?”

  “What?”

  “Hoarding all that guilt for yourself.”

  He was about to deny it, but then he just shrugged. “It reminds me that it’s not over yet.”

  “Fair enough.” She nodded. “Tell me about Olyanda.”

  “It’s an Earth-type exoplanet orbiting a Population 1 star—an active star, subject to unpredictable electromagnetic storms, so poor-to-zilch reliable radio communication, hence a full psi-tech crew for the setup.”

  “So, it’s cheap real estate, marginal subsistence possibilities with little chance of future tech development beyond, say, late industrial revolution level. Great! With a little luck the poor sods can reinvent the steam engine within just a few centuries.”

  “That’s about it. Let’s not forget they chose it. The settlers are Ecolibrian. They’re looking for a back-to-basics lifestyle. Horse-drawn vehicles and everything made by hand.”

  “Aren’t the Ecolibrians politically active, too?”

  He nodded. “The FPA wants them out of the political arena before the next election—at any price—and as for them, they’re eager to be gone to a world of their own.”

  “I get the idea.”

  “You want in or out?”

&
nbsp; “I thought Crowder said there was no way into Chenon without going through official channels.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “I’m not out of ideas yet. There’s always Crossways.”

  • • •

  Gabrius Crowder sat up in bed and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. He hated telepathic communications. They could—and often did—catch him at inconvenient times. This one had left him with a lingering headache, though he didn’t know whether that was a direct result of his implant or from trying to keep secrets. Even though he’d been assured that his receiving implant couldn’t breach his privacy, he always worried about letting something slip.

  Gods, he wished he didn’t have so much to hide.

  But he did—and having Ben Benjamin around was proving to be a liability. He’d kept him working away from Chenon, given him every long-distance survey job that came up, minimized his time at HQ, but whenever he came back, Ben was digging into files, checking suspects. Damn! He’d thought the man’s persistence would fade with time when he failed to find anything, but he was relentless in his determination to discover who’d been behind the Hera-3 attack. It was unfortunate that Ben’s goals and Crowder’s had set them on an inevitable collision course.

  It was time to find a permanent solution.

  The Olyanda mission would take two and a half years: nine months’ journey time each way, in cryo, and a year on the planet. He could arrange to waylay the cryo pods of the Hera-3 survivors on the return journey. There was a warehouse facility where such things could be stored long-term. Fifty years would do the trick, or maybe a hundred. Ben would be somebody else’s problem then.

  Hera-3 had been a bloody disaster. Ben and his team were supposed to be off planet long before the black-ops fleet moved in, but Ari van Blaiden’s man, Craike, had mistimed the attack. Ben had not only managed to get himself and fifty-seven of his team off planet, under fire, but he’d brought all fifteen hundred surviving settlers home, too—witnesses who had needed relocating at the far end of nowhere, with a handsome payoff, to make the rest of their lives too easy for recriminations.

  Crowder had split up Ben’s team, but with the chance to deal with them all in one go he’d managed to gather them together again—no small achievement in itself.

  Luckily, none of them had close family. Crowder would have been surprised if they had. Psi-techs tended to work in pairs if they were inclined to have lovers, but those they left behind, families and old friends, became separated by time and a growing age differential. And, deep down, deadheads tended to distrust them. Dammit, Crowder distrusted them, too, and he had an implant, though there was a world of difference between having a simple receiving implant and being a true psi-tech. Crowder had once been bitterly disappointed when he’d tested negative for psi abilities, but psi-techs, for all their apparent glamour and want-for-nothing salaries, were used by the megacorps; they rarely ran them.

  Crowder sighed and swung his legs out of bed. It was no good. He wasn’t going to get back to sleep again, so he might as well go into the office. No one would be surprised to see him so early. He often spent the whole night there. The Trust was his life. He was a whisker away from a seat on the board, presuming Ben didn’t spoil everything.

  He’d been putting off dealing with Ben. Dammit, Ben had saved his life at Londrissi, and he genuinely liked the man. Even on Hera-3, Ben had only done what he did best—risen to the occasion. It hardly seemed fair that he should end up as collateral damage. Crowder shied away from the obvious solution. He owed the man something for saving his life—even if it was only a one-way trip to the future. Long-term storage was a humane option.

  Crowder recognized the irony of the situation. He hadn’t hesitated to encourage Ari van Blaiden to attack a whole colony though, in truth, he had been surprised by the ferocity of the attack and the subsequent loss of life. Ari had scooped up millions of credits in loose platinum, and the Trust, according to plan, had swept in afterward and taken over the administration of the remaining resources. It was almost fair. The Trust needed the platinum, and the colonists were being obstinate. He could almost classify it as an expedient political takeover. Disposing of Ben, however, would be murder and despite everything, Crowder had to draw the line somewhere. He’d never met the colonists, but Ben was his friend.

  Was it all worth it?

  Yes, it was. In Hera-3 he’d gained a huge platinum resource for the Trust, a big deal even after all the payoffs and Ari’s personal take. He’d do it again in a heartbeat because the Trust needed the platinum to feed its growing network of productive colonies.

  Once he got his seat on the board . . .

  He thought about the current board. No imagination. No willingness to take risks. Moribund. They needed him if the Trust was to keep its lead over Alphacorp. Anne di Doren, who had reinvented the Trust in the aftermath of the meteor strike on Earth in the twenty-fourth century, was his many times great-grandmother. He had di Doren blood in his veins; he could lead the Trust to even greater heights, leave Alphacorp eating dust.

  Yes, he could.

  • • •

  Victor Lorient closed his personal flight case and set it down on the floor. Even as director of their new colony, his luggage allowance was no bigger than anyone else’s. He wondered whether he could sneak anything into the admin crate, but that didn’t seem fair. Besides, Jack Mario would notice. Jack noticed everything. That’s what made him such a great administrator.

  “It’s done. How about you?” Victor looked across the bed to his wife, Rena.

  She smiled ruefully. “My office has been reduced to one small box, but the personal stuff is difficult. I thought I’d already done the hard part when I threw practically all my old clothes and possessions into the recycler, but this is hard, too. I can’t take what I’d planned. I saved three good dresses for the time on Chenon, but I guess I’ve only got room for two.” She looked wistfully at the purple fabric lying in a crumpled heap on the pillow. “And leaving behind all the everyday trappings of life here is so . . . well . . . so . . . Oh, I don’t know. We wanted to make a clean break, but now the moment is here I realize just how much we’re leaving behind. Do you know, I still have Danny’s baby shawl?”

  “You said you wouldn’t go all sentimental on me.”

  Rena sniffed and wiped away a tear. “I promised that I wouldn’t let my sentimentality get in the way. I didn’t say that I could just snap my fingers and turn it off.”

  “Mom, Dad, I’m all packed now; do you want me to take the archive box down?” Danny stood in the doorway. He was small for his nineteen years, delicately built and dark-haired, with a pleasant moon-round face and heavy epicanthic folds masking the inner corner of each eye. It gave his face a permanent vacant expression, except when he smiled, which he did often. Then his eyes sparkled with good humor.

  Danny was special to Victor and Rena and very special to the Ecolibrian movement. When they’d refused to let the medics intervene, Danny had been born, naturally, with Down syndrome, a condition that had been overcome centuries ago by gene therapy. Loved and loving in return, Danny had become a symbol that perfect life did not require technically induced perfection in order to live.

  Because of his condition, Victor had been able to keep Danny out of the automatic testing for latent psi-abilities. Victor loved his son far too much to let him be sucked into that trap.

  “I haven’t finished packing the archive box yet, Danny,” Victor said.

  “I finished it for you.”

  Victor frowned, but he didn’t let the irritation reach his voice. “I’d better check it again. It’s very important that the archives are in order, so that in years to come people will remember us for our beliefs, and they’ll know why we chose to leave Earth and resettle on Olyanda.”

  “I didn’t leave anything behind, Dad, honest. Are you mad with me?”

  “Of course not. You can come and help me check it while your mother finishes her packing.”


  Victor put his arm around Danny’s shoulders and guided him gently to the study.

  “See.” Danny opened the crate and lifted out the contents. Most of the permanent records were on crystal dataslides and there were four identical boxes.

  “Which was the one from the desk, Dan, and which from the shelves? I meant to label them before they were packed.”

  “That was from the desk.” Danny pointed. “Or was it that one?”

  Victor sighed. “Bring me the reader. I’ll have to check.”

  Danny unrolled a slim screen and handed it over. Victor checked the first crystal and slipped it into the base unit. A date, three years earlier, showed on the header. He was going to flip the crystal straight out, but a holographic image flashed upward from the screen and he was drawn to the meeting room where, if he really thought about it, the turning point had come. What they had agreed on that day had led to their current preparations for departure. In years to come this would be the only record, but he remembered it all so clearly: the emotion, the tension, even the smell of Rena’s perfume as she leaned against him for reassurance. They’d got what they wanted, but at a price. In order to found a new colony on Ecolibrian principles, they had to agree to work with the psi-techs for the first year.

  Just the thought made Victor break out in a cold sweat. Psi-tech abominations were one of the main reasons he wanted to leave Earth. He had firsthand experience. He knew how dangerous they could be.

  Chapter Five

  CROSSWAYS

  From: Robert Craike, Mirrimar-14 Hub.

  To: Ari van Blaiden: Alphacorp HQ, Earth.

  Recipient’s eyes only.

  Message:

  Subject on station but not reported for work today. Apartment checked. Not occupied since yesterday. Berenger and Hoffstead have drawn a blank. Checking departures from shuttleport. Negative so far.