Empire of Dust

by Jacey Bedford

  Her left hand fluttered to the stone in her sleeve pocket, fingers feeling the hard lump beneath the seal. She was sweating slightly now, despite her buddysuit and the coolness of the day.

  “Do you want to tell . . .”

  He hadn’t even completed the question when her head began to shake from side to side, more and more violently. She couldn’t stop it. He let go of her hand and held her head, palms warm on her cheeks, until she stopped fighting him.

  “I know,” she said. “Breathe.”

  “That’s right, you’re getting it. Look, I can’t just give you a pill and make it better. I can’t do anything else right here and now, but I can work with you—maybe deep monitoring sessions. We’ll have to work by instinct; there’s no easy answer, but we’ve made a start. At least, now, it’s obvious that you have some kind of block in place, probably illegal because you can’t remember how it got there. The dizziness and sickness you feel is caused when you try to go against whatever it was designed to do.”

  “I’ve been programmed?” She stumbled over the word.

  “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’ve undergone complete Neural Readjustment, but I think someone has tried to gag you. Tried to make you forget something.”

  “I’ve not forg . . .” Flashing lights danced through her skull again and she shut up. That was better.

  “I see. You know the information, you just can’t communicate it to anyone else. Is that it?”

  “No.” She said the word that jumped into her mouth and her eyes widened.

  “I get the picture.”

  She breathed.

  • • •

  “Any luck?” Ben asked as Ronan climbed up to his den.

  His teeth started to hurt, and he realized he’d had them clenched while he’d been thinking about what had happened to Cara. Ben had been in her mind. How had he missed it? Surely Ronan was wrong. He’d seen people after Neural Readjustment and Cara didn’t seem like any of them. She seemed so . . . What? Normal?

  “Are you all right?” Ronan asked.

  His turmoil must have shown in his face, or else Ronan had read him like a book. He pushed away the emotions that threatened to paralyze his reasoning.

  Ronan answered his unasked question. “She didn’t realize. It didn’t affect her until she tried to tell you whatever it is she’s been programmed to keep hidden.”

  “Before we left Chenon, she was trying to tell me something.” Ben recalled the dead-end conversations about the identity of Cara’s enemy. “So she couldn’t tell me who?”

  “What?”

  Ronan obviously hadn’t followed his thoughts; maybe that was all for the best.

  “It would help if I knew some of Cara’s background,” Ronan said.

  “You’re going to break the block?”

  “She has to do that herself, but I’ll guide her in the right direction.”

  Ben nodded. “I can’t help you much, but . . .” He wondered how much to say. “Look, Ronan, doctor/patient confidentiality is going to be working overtime here.”

  “I would never . . .”

  “I know, but there are some pretty major things you aren’t aware of. I can tell you some of it, but Cara’s the only person who can fill in the gaps.”

  Where to begin. He leaned against one of the passenger couches. “I met her on Mirrimar-14. She needed a way out of there, and I was it. She came on to me one night and—I guess—made a play for my sympathy.”

  “It worked, then?”

  “Hell, no, but that didn’t stop her.” He grinned. “She said someone was after her, but wouldn’t say who. Couldn’t, I guess.”

  “Now you’re not telling me everything, but that’s okay.”

  Of course. Ronan was an Empath; he knew Ben was giving him the short version. He drew in a slow, deep breath.

  “All right. Whatever it is, it’s between the two of you.”

  “Not just between the two of us. There’s someone in her past.” Ben swallowed hard to get rid of the lump in his throat. She’d told him she’d have to fly very high to reach absolute zero on the emotional scale. He shoved the rising tide of jealousy and resentment away as far as it would go, but it sat on the edge of his awareness, making him feel dirty. “Can you break the programming?”

  “Maybe not—not immediately anyway. I’m going to try a series of deep monitoring sessions; use regression to try and take Cara back to the time it happened. She needs to remember what happened to her. When she’s reached that stage, then she can begin to do something about it.” He shrugged. “She has to try and edge past it.”

  “Can I help?”

  “Maybe. Once I’ve shaken it loose and she’s smashed it, you can try to pick out the splinters. If she wants to talk, just let her talk. Maybe, piece by piece, we can crack it between us. The alternative is to build a wall around it and forget it.”

  “But then we’ll never know the extent of it, will we?” Ben said the words and then wanted to kick himself. He felt guilty for thinking the worst, but what if she was someone’s plant on the Olyanda team? Was she a time bomb waiting to go boom? Would she wake up one morning and do whatever she’d been programmed to do?

  “Can I trust her?” he asked.

  “Whatever they’ve done to her, she’s still Cara. Do you trust Cara?”

  “I trust the person I think is Cara.” It was the person or persons unknown who were pulling her strings that he didn’t trust. He was suddenly very glad that he’d not told her about the platinum.

  • • •

  Gabrius Crowder sat in front of the comm-unit. He couldn’t use a psi-tech for this conversation. He was nervous. Since Ben had called him, he’d pulled the platinum data and had been thinking and planning. A planet full of platinum couldn’t be ignored, but there would be people on the Board who would block any overt action. That was the trouble with the current Board. He had one ally, but most of them weren’t willing to take risks.

  He’d deliver the platinum despite them.

  He’d examined the Olyanda contract from all angles. He couldn’t see a legal or an affordable way of separating the settlers from their planet. Illegal it had to be, then. The end justified the means.

  It galled him that he needed van Blaiden now. The feeling was unsettling to say the least, but he’d be making an offer that was too attractive to turn down—at least if you were a greedy grasping son of a one-legged whore, or maybe Ari van Blaiden.

  Crowder knew the way van Blaiden thought. Hell, he’d helped shape the man, helped to insinuate him into Alphacorp’s hierarchy, helped him toward his first promotion. He knew which of van Blaiden’s strings to pull to make him dance. Yet van Blaiden was a classic example of the student outperforming the master—or striving to. Crowder wasn’t ready to roll over and play dead. But Ari was dangerous.

  The comm-unit array glowed and a holographic head-and-shoulders image sprang up, full-size.

  “Crowder.” Ari van Blaiden’s voice had knives in it.

  “Ari, dear boy.” Crowder went for the soft approach.

  “Do I understand you are asking for my help?”

  “Let’s say I’m offering you another business opportunity. This is personal, for you, you understand, not Alphacorp.”

  “Talk.”

  “In strictest confidence?” Asking Ari to do anything that he didn’t want to do was like spitting into the wind, but it was all part of the foreplay of the deal.

  “Of course.” Ari sounded sincere, but that was one of his talents. That’s probably why he got what he wanted so much of the time, and why Crowder had abandoned any formal understanding they might once have had. If he wanted to work with Ari now, he did it on a strict one-deal-at-a-time basis.

  Crowder hesitated only fractionally. “I need somewhere where I can offload thirty thousand settlers. Maybe a planet, but one far from the regular shipping lanes.”

  “You want to trade? A planet, even a non-bioformed one, is not something you can buy for a few credi
ts. What have you got to offer?”

  “Platinum. Interested?”

  There was a pause.

  “Maybe. Tell me more.”

  “Not on screen. We’ll meet in person. For now, find me somewhere to dump the settlers out of harm’s way.”

  “The Trust has plenty of planets. Why come to me?”

  He wanted to say: because I wouldn’t be ruthless enough to dump thirty thousand people on a non-bioformed planet without backup, or fire them into the Folds without a hope of ever returning, or even leave them stacked in cryo capsules on a space hulk heading for the Rim until—one by one—their life support failed and they turned into dust. Ari van Blaiden might do any of those things, but once he’d agreed to take the settlers and find them a planet, it ceased to be Crowder’s problem. Crowder tried to think of the thirty thousand settlers on the second ark as one unit, not as thirty thousand individuals.

  He was going to be responsible for the deaths of the first arkload of settlers; he didn’t want responsibility for the rest.

  “What’s your time scale on this?” Ari asked.

  “They’re already in transit, currently between gates. An unarmed ark, ripe for boarding. The crew know nothing.”

  Ari whistled. “You don’t want much, do you?”

  “You can do it.” Crowder sounded confident.

  “Maybe. But I want something else from you in return.”

  “What?”

  “Cara Carlinni.”

  “I told you before . . .”

  “I know what you told me, but I eliminated all the other possibilities. Believe me, I’ve been very thorough, and her workmate Jussaro was very helpful, eventually. She has to have left Mirrimar-14 with your man, Benjamin.”

  Crowder suddenly saw the opportunity smiling at him, one he would not have dared to contemplate before, but now his decision to gain Olyanda for the Trust had unfettered his conscience.

  “We need to meet in person,” Crowder said to the hologram. “Soon!”

  “Crossways. Four days from now. Noon, local time, in the Koshee Corner House. Bring only one bodyguard and I’ll do the same.”

  Crowder nodded agreement.

  Chapter Eighteen

  COLLUSION

  Crowder decided the four-day wait had been worthwhile. He tried to keep the exultation out of his voice as he sat in a booth in the Corner House, one of the more upmarket establishments on Crossways. This meeting had gone much better than he had dared to hope. Ari van Blaiden had been totally courteous and even pleasant. His eagerness to skim tons of platinum ore from a prime site was probably his driving motive.

  “We have a deal, then?” Crowder asked.

  “I’ll take the settlers off your hands, no questions asked, and skim my share of the platinum before the Trust moves in officially. It will take four or five months to get ore carriers into the vicinity. How does that work with your timing?”

  Crowder tried to stop himself from smiling. “I can work around that. I have it on good authority that the FPA inspectorate will be paying a surprise visit in the colony’s fifth month. We can’t make a move until after that.” An outright fabrication, but he wanted to make sure Ari didn’t get there before his trap was ready to spring. “Don’t jump the gun this time.”

  Ari swallowed the lie. The Five Power Alliance often checked on colonies, especially the ones that were politically sensitive.

  “Agreed. Now, what about Cara Carlinni? What did you find out?” Ari leaned forward across the table.

  “There is a discrepancy in the records. The woman we have listed as Benjamin’s wife is a fraud. Your Carlinni, I guess. I can confirm she’s on the Olyanda team as a comm operative.”

  “A Psi-1?”

  “Yes.” Crowder passed a dataslide across the table, and Ari docked the crystalline chip with his handpad and threw up a holographic display of port security footage.

  Ari stared for a long time. “She’s changed her hair, but that’s her.” It was as if the temperature in the room dropped by ten degrees.

  The sudden change in van Blaiden’s attitude left Crowder squirming. The feeling down the back of his neck made him want to find a nice solid wall to lean against even though it was exactly what he’d been hoping for.

  “It’s easier to settle a score on a planet with no peacekeeping force. I’ll make sure she’s waiting for you.” He sowed the seed and hoped it would take root. He wanted Ari van Blaiden on Olyanda at just the right time.

  “I wasn’t intending to go myself. . . .”

  Crowder had his wits under control again. “I thought I taught you better than that, Ari. The really important things can’t be left to hirelings. That’s why we’re both here in person, now. After the FPA inspectorate leaves, I’ll pull off the psi-tech team and leave Carlinni’s cryo pod behind.”

  “I want Benjamin as well.”

  Crowder hesitated long enough to let Ari interpret it as reluctance. He sighed. “Very well. You can have both Carlinni and Benjamin. The settlers themselves won’t be a problem; they’re not armed. Any you leave behind will be dealt with later.”

  “How do you propose to do that?”

  Crowder stared bleakly at him and then blinked. “That’s for me and my conscience. I’ll give your boys plenty of time to get in and out first. Perhaps they can see to the Cara business for you if you’re not going.”

  “She has something I want. It’s personal.”

  “Then I hear Olyanda is very pleasant in the autumn. I’ll let you know as soon as the FPA leaves. After that you’ve got a slim window of opportunity.”

  Ari van Blaiden grunted, but it was a low, animal sound, not at all designed to ease Crowder’s nervousness. Crowder glanced around. He was pretty sure van Blaiden’s minder, standing a little way off, was the ill-reputed Craike.

  “Do we have a deal?” Crowder asked again.

  “A deal.” Ari nodded to Craike, who stood apart with Crowder’s man, Danniri. Craike quietly settled the bill, ready for departure.

  “Remember, it must be a discreet job,” Crowder said. “You can scoop enough platinum to keep you in luxury for the rest of your life, but no one must ever discover where it came from.”

  “Understood. I’m glad you brought this to me, Crowder. I thought that our association had been irrevocably damaged after Hera-3.”

  “Hera-3 was a shambles. It nearly rebounded on all of us.”

  “Tell me, what upset you most, the fact that Craike went in too early or the fact that he didn’t make a thorough job of it and eliminate all the witnesses?”

  “He cost me a whole psi-tech team.”

  Crowder bit off the rest of his response. If Craike had followed the plan and waited until the psi-techs had lifted off, then Ben might have had suspicions, but he’d have had no firsthand evidence and no eyewitnesses. Crowder wouldn’t have had to offer expensive pensions to buy off most of the survivors, and he wouldn’t have to get rid of Ben and the remains of his team now. What a waste. Crowder bitterly regretted messing up Ben’s life. The man had saved him; it was a foul way to repay a debt.

  Ari waved dismissively. “If we’d waited, we might have missed the opportunity and some other outfit might have done just what I did.”

  “I know you, Ari. I know what drives you. You’ve done well for yourself in Alphacorp—at my suggestion, if you recall. It’s worked out well for both of us, mostly.”

  Ari nodded. “I didn’t give you enough credit for ambition, Crowder. I do hope our interests never clash.”

  Crowder looked into the younger man’s eyes. Ari van Blaiden was too hungry. It made him dangerous. He bluffed it out. “Think of me as a potential ally.” How easy it was to lie once you’d started.

  Crowder tried to suppress the thought that people would have to die in order for him to achieve his objective. In the grand scheme of things the Olyanda settlers and the psi-techs—even Ben—were just pawns. He had the moral high ground, doing what was necessary to promote the Trust’s best interest
s, whereas Ari was working for himself, making the rules for his own dirty little games as he went along. Greed and corruption; it was everywhere.

  If Crowder played this right, the van Blaiden problem would be solved soon, destabilizing Alphacorp while the Trust gained a fortune in platinum.

  Checkmate.

  • • •

  “You want me to schedule you into the survey runs, Boss? Are you crazy? You’ve got too much to do and, frankly, we don’t need the help.” Wenna looked up from her desk.

  Ben ran his hand down the doorframe of the ops room in the LV.

  “Don’t try that, Wenna, I know what’s got to be done and how many qualified people you have to do it. You’ll be doubly up against it once Lorient’s volunteers are installed. I’m not quite sure why he did that, but I’m sure somewhere in his brain it’s connected to the platinum.”

  “I’m not sure he thought it through at all. Damn fool idea if you ask me, especially when in all other respects he seems to be trying to keep settlers and psi-techs apart.”

  Ben shrugged. “We can cope. I’ll cover the areas of likely platinum deposits. If I take Cara with me, I can stay in contact wherever I am. You get the extra help, and I get to run off some energy. Besides, I’ll go crazy if I sit behind a desk waiting for Lorient’s next bright idea.”

  “And what about me? I need to run off some energy, too. This damned arm keeps me stuck behind a desk.” She lifted her arm and then dropped it to her side again in an exaggerated shrug. “Do you know what my file says?” she continued. “Of course you do. It says ‘Not recommended for active duty,’ and that’s a tough one to live with.”

  “I’m sorry, Wenna.”

  “Well, your duty here is as hampering to you as my arm is to me. The fact is you shouldn’t be out in the field. You should stay here where it’s nice and safe and hand out orders to the rest of us. As your second in command, it’s my duty to remind you—”

  “That the platinum must be covered up at all costs.”

  “Don’t you think I know that? Hera-3—”

  “I could have followed Crowder’s orders and brought you all off Hera-3 safely.”