Empire of Dust

by Jacey Bedford

  *Sami, are you all right?*

  *I’m with Liam. We took shelter in some caves while the storm was at its height. We’re at Millertown. The people are all right, but the mill’s a heap of kindling.*

  *We need a Finder. Come as quickly as you can. We’ve got a couple of missing kids.*

  *On my way.*

  Cara was with Ben and Tellaman when Lorient, Rena, and Jack Mario arrived in a medevac transport, returning from ferrying injured to Landing.

  “Director Lorient,” Tellaman shouted to gather those within earshot. “It’s Director Lorient, Mrs. Lorient, and Mr. Mario.” He started forward to greet the new arrivals.

  “That’s all we need,” Ben said under his breath.

  Lorient shook Tellaman by the hand and then hugged him like a father, even though Tellaman must have been a good decade older. Rena Lorient was quickly waylaid by a group of women and drawn into hearing their concerns.

  “Commander Benjamin.” Lorient acknowledged them with a nod. “Mrs. Benjamin. What a disaster.” There was no bluster. Cara felt Ben’s surprise.

  “How many dead and injured?” Lorient asked.

  “Two missing; seven dead including one psi-tech,” Ben said. “Fourteen seriously injured, thirty-three needing further treatment or observation, and one hundred and thirty-five walking wounded out of a total of three hundred and four.”

  “What about livestock and equipment?” Jack Mario asked.

  “The wind completely smashed more than half the wagons,” Ben said, “and damaged most of the rest, though most of the chassis can be retimbered. Personal possessions and supplies are scattered from here to the northern ranges. Lee can tell you about the livestock better than I can.”

  Ben nodded to the tall, angular woman who had just joined them. She looked bone-weary, and her long straw-blonde hair was escaping from its ties.

  “We’re still counting. I’ve had to slaughter over forty head of cattle. I’ve got a bunch of settlers trying to butcher and preserve the meat before it spoils, but they could use some help. The sheep are all missing. I don’t know if they panicked and ran or if the wind simply lifted them up and blew them away. I’ve got a flitter sweeping the area for signs now. The heavy horses mostly came though okay, but some animals have scattered and others were injured by flying debris or by each other in the panic.”

  “You said there were two people missing.” Lorient turned to Ben.

  “Little girls, sisters. Their father is on the critical list; he’s already been shipped out for medical treatment. Their mother is still here, bruised but not badly injured. Sami Isaksten, our best Finder, is on her way here now.”

  “The mother, what’s her name?”

  “Ferina Roskayne, Director,” Tellaman said.

  “She must be distraught. I’ll see her first and then, if you’ll gather all the bereaved and walking wounded, I’ll hold a meeting, see if I can give them something to steady them down. Jack . . .” He turned to his administrator. “Benjamin’s emergency teams seem to be doing all the right things. I’ll leave you to coordinate with them. I’ll do what I’m best at.”

  As Victor Lorient strode purposefully toward the makeshift camp, Ben looked directly at Cara. She didn’t need to be telepathic to know what he was thinking, but Lee Gardham came up to them, shaking her head, and voiced it.

  *The director never loses the ability to surprise me. The way he’s been acting lately, I’d have thought he’d have blown a gasket over this, blamed us for not giving enough warning, and, yet, here he is, saying and doing exactly the right things.*

  *I wish we could rely on it at other times, too,* Ben said. *Still, let’s be grateful for what we’ve got and start on the cleanup.* He switched to speech for Jack Mario’s benefit. “Cara, when Sami arrives, you and I will take her up in a flitter and see what she can find. Get as many people as the cleanup team can spare. Follow the storm track on horseback and check the immediate area thoroughly.”

  “Good luck,” Jack said. “I wish I was coming with you. I feel so helpless.”

  “You’ll be more use here, picking up the pieces,” Ben said. “Rhinager will be your message service, either to us or to Landing. Just ask him if you need anything.”

  Jack nodded. “I’d like to bring in a settler team to help the families to pull all their stuff together.”

  “When we’ve picked up what pieces we can find, I think your settlers might appreciate a shuttle out of here to their destination. They’ve been through a lot and giving them a ride is the least we can do.”

  “Thanks. I’ll talk to the director.”

  Sami arrived and turned all her talents toward finding the two little girls. They took a flitter up and ranged out wider and wider from the wagon train, making several overlapping passes, following Sami’s directions. The farther away from the site they got, the more likely it was that finding either child alive would be a miracle.

  “There.” Sami was positive and Ben brought the flitter down to within a few meters of the ground. There was debris scattered across the grass. Sami nodded, and he eased the flitter down to one side of the spot.

  Cara’s heart was thumping. She knew that if Sami said they were here, then this is where they were, but part of her didn’t want to find them. While they were lost, there was still the chance of a miracle.

  “Here they are.” Ben’s voice cracked as he called them over.

  Cara dropped to her knees in the debris beside two bodies. The three-year-old was battered and bloody, but the baby looked peacefully asleep, not a mark on her. Tears welled up and washed down Cara’s face.

  The body bags were way too big for the tiny bundles. They laid the little girls in the flitter and Cara contacted Bick.

  *We’ve found them,* she said. *You’d better give Lorient the bad news; he’ll probably be the best one to tell the girls’ mother.*

  *I will.*

  There was a silent crowd gathered to meet the flitter when they arrived back at the wreck site. Disaster pulled a community closer together and there was no shortage of willing hands to take the bodies and do whatever was necessary.

  “We’re going to bury all the victims here.” Jack Mario caught Ben and Cara by their flitter. “Director Lorient is going to conduct a service.”

  “That’s kind of him.”

  “He wanted me to ask whether you wanted your young psi-tech buried here as well. She’s as much a victim of the storm as any of the settlers. We’d be honored to have her resting with our dead.”

  “Thank you. That’s a kind offer, but she has—had—friends who will want to give her a good send-off. We’ll take her back to base.”

  When the last casualty had been flown out back to Landing, they lifted the body of Fliss Ruffalo onto an antigrav gurney and covered her over. The woman who’d sat with her in her dying moments led Bronsen by the hand and hugged him before she gently pushed him into the medevac shuttle.

  “Thanks for staying with him,” Cara said.

  “It’s not much, but it’s the least I could do,” the woman said. “Such a waste of a young life.” She shook hands with Ben and Cara and every psi-tech within reach. “You all have our thanks for your help and our sorrow for your loss.”

  • • •

  As Cara’s head hit the pillow back in her own bed at Landing, she realized that she’d gone nearly forty hours without sleep. She was beginning to shake internally, now that the adrenaline was wearing off.

  Ben was still working, filing the reports of the search and logging the deaths of the settlers and Fliss Ruffalo.

  Even tiredness could not keep away Cara’s sick, empty feeling of loss. The death toll had risen to nineteen, including the two children. She hoped the girls’ father would pull through. Anna said she thought he would.

  Surprisingly, Lee had broken down when they’d arrived back at the wagon train with the two tiny bodies. She’d told Cara that she’d left her own daughter in cryo back on Earth in a Trust facility.

  The
thought of the little girl lying asleep, waiting for her mother, somehow disturbed Cara almost as much as the dead and maimed. The image of dead and sleeping children haunted her until she couldn’t tell which was which. She was exhausted, but dreamless sleep wouldn’t come.

  “Lights.”

  The overheads came on at her command, and she threw back the covers, slipped her robe over her shoulders, and pushed her feet into light shoes. The pat-pat of her soft soles echoed down the dimly lit corridor. She passed Gen’s room and Wenna’s, both dark and quiet, but found that there was a light still on in the ready room.

  “Cara, I was just making tea. Want some?” Ben looked up with a cup in his hands.

  She nodded. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “It’s been a hell of a day. Hell of a two days, actually.”

  “I keep thinking about those little girls.”

  “Don’t.”

  “I know—there’s nothing I can do now, and there’s nothing I could have done then that would help.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “How’s Lewis Bronsen?”

  “Ronan requisitioned a bottle of her best Scotch from Marta Mansoro’s secret stash. She said he wasn’t going to drink it without her, so the two of them have gone to get Bronsen roaring drunk. I thought about joining them myself, but I sent Wenna instead.”

  “Wenna and Ronan?”

  “And a bottle of Scotch.”

  “Let’s hope it works.” She took the cup and sat in a chair with her knees up under her chin, sipping the hot brew.

  They sat companionably, not talking until Cara had finished her drink. “I’m going back to bed.” She nearly said, Are you coming? but thought he might misconstrue it as an invitation. “Good night.”

  • • •

  Lorient’s volunteers had gone through the longest induction course Ben could possibly justify, but eventually they had to be incorporated into the survey teams. Wenna had drawn the short straw. He’d thought about giving them to Cara, but that seemed cruel—to the recruits. He figured Wenna would have more patience and that she’d draft in other tutors as she needed them. Maybe he’d suggest Cara teach them unarmed combat.

  He tried not to smile as that thought crossed his mind. Instead, he drew his brows together and put on his stern face while he looked them over, standing or slouching together in the body of the LV. They were all men, of course. No surprises there, given that Lorient wasn’t chancing any work liaisons leading to psi genes entering the settler gene pool.

  He glanced at Wenna’s tight lips. She knew why he’d agreed to Lorient’s ridiculous suggestion, but she didn’t like it.

  Ben had misgivings, too, but he knew Lorient wanted his own men in the loop if news of the platinum broke. At least having novices klutzing around gave Wenna more than enough opportunities to lose the data they needed to lose. It was almost a win-win situation—almost. There was just that small problem that they were going to drive his teams mad, not to mention be a danger to themselves and others.

  Back to the recruits. They looked like a mixed bag. He’d taken bets that half of them wouldn’t stick it out, but that was okay. Natural selection was the first step in the weeding-out process. First of all he wanted to scare them. He’d already stated very firmly—on the record—that he took no responsibility for their safety. If any individual wasn’t up to the job, he could put a whole team at risk.

  He didn’t try to be pleasant. He kept his face impassive and his tone even as he addressed the assembled settlers. “I should welcome you to survey work and thank you for volunteering, but I think you all know that having you here was not in our original plans. That doesn’t mean we don’t like you, or that we won’t treat you well, but we have already had to interrupt scheduled work to train you and try to give you enough savvy so that you don’t get yourselves—or anyone else—killed.”

  He looked at the recruits. Some took what he said with barely a flicker of irritation, a few looked positively offended, and a couple were downright angry. Watch the angry ones. The ones with a short fuse were bad news.

  “You’re going on active service now. Real survey work. I hope you can all take orders. I won’t risk lives to pull one of you out of a self-created jam.” He looked at the twenty-seven volunteers, an ill-assorted lot, all shapes, sizes, ages, and ethnic backgrounds. Half of them didn’t look fit enough to take the kind of physical work that might be involved.

  “Can any of you pilot a flitter?”

  Only five sure hands went up and a couple wavered.

  “Well, can you or can’t you?” Ben asked one of the waverers.

  “I took a few lessons.”

  The other waverer was a tall man, light-skinned with a shock of dark hair. “I had a license, but lost it again on a technicality. I can fly, though, if you aren’t worried about Earth legalities.”

  “Did your technicality involve injuring anyone?”

  “No.” The man grinned. “The authorities didn’t appreciate the way I used the vip lanes as a shortcut.”

  Ben nodded to Wenna.

  “Name?” she asked the man.

  “Max Constant.”

  Ben turned away while Wenna listed the other potential pilots and left her allocating volunteers to teams.

  Jack Mario hovered in the doorway, and Ben went out to join him.

  “Come to make sure we haven’t eaten them yet, Jack?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t see this one coming or I might have talked the director out of it.” Jack shrugged. “I feel responsible for their welfare. I’m sorry you got burdened.”

  “It’s not your fault.” Ben liked Jack. He reminded him of a more streamlined, younger version of Crowder, straightforward and practical. He was sensible enough to realize that without the psi-techs the colony would take decades to achieve what they could manage in a year.

  Ben sighed. He turned his back to the room and dropped his voice so the recruits wouldn’t be able to hear him. “Look, I know what I said, about sacrificing them if they got themselves into trouble, but you know that’s not the case. My crews will do everything they can to keep your guys safe. How would it look if we lost them? You don’t need to worry that we’ll put them in danger, but I’m not going to tell them that. There are still no guarantees in this job.”

  “I believe you’ll do your best.”

  “How’s the director? We’ve not seen much of him lately.”

  Jack stared out of the window, avoiding eye contact. “I don’t know, Ben. Truth?”

  “Preferably.”

  Jack shrugged. “The director finds your presence here, that is the psi-tech presence here . . . intimidating, but he’d never admit it. He’s even moved his own office to another building because I have Saedi Sugrue working with me. She’s brilliant, by the way. You should promote her when you get home. Director Lorient’s mind doesn’t work on the same level as most of us. He’s a very intelligent man, but he’s truly phobic about anything psi, and he’s gathered a small group of followers who feel the same.”

  “He has the backing of every one of your settlers. That makes him king,” Ben said. “And I’ve noticed that, now that the settlers are in a strong majority, he’s getting more of an emperor complex.”

  Jack turned back to face Ben and smiled. “You’ve spotted that, have you? It’s hard not to be swayed by adoration. The people will do anything for him. That’s why most of them are on Olyanda. He sold them a dream.”

  “Why are you here, Jack? You’re not the type to buy dreams.”

  “I’ve known and admired Victor Lorient for most of my adult life. He gave me my first admin job when the big corporations managed to find good reasons for not employing an Ecolibrian, however well qualified. He’s not always so . . .” Jack cleared his throat and changed his tack mid-sentence. “The director has a vision. It’s a good vision, but he needs a good administrator to make it work.”

  “I’d be much happier if you were in charge and Lorient was confined to his pastoral duties. Where do you st
and on the Ecolibrian thing? You’re certainly not psi-phobic.”

  “No, I’m not. What about you? What do you think about us?”

  “I want the colony to be everything you all want it to be. I just hope that the ’phobes can keep their feelings in check until we’ve finished what we were contracted to do.”

  “Me, too. I’ll do everything I can to keep a lid on things.”

  They turned to watch the recruits taking their seats. Wenna would already have some idea of which ones she wanted to send back to prune the numbers down to the minimum number of fourteen that they’d agreed with Jack.

  “This will be the first test—to see whether this lot can work with us,” Ben said.

  • • •

  There was a snatch in Cara’s head; an outside interruption from the tech in charge of the flitter bay.

  *Cara, can you get Commander Benjamin over here, please. I don’t know how to handle this. He just climbed in while I was working on the antigravs.* He beamed a picture of Danny Lorient sitting in the pilot’s seat of a four-man flitter with his finger hovering over the power control. *He says the commander gave him permission.*

  Cara left her food untouched, glad for the excuse. “Sorry, folks—duty calls.” She relayed the message to Ben across the room and saw him begin to move. They arrived at the door together and ran across to the flitter bay.

  Danny had been a regular visitor to Landing, usually managing to tag along with Jack or sometimes get a lift on one of the groundcars with Saedi. His time in the hospital had given him an ease with psi-techs that the rest of his family didn’t have. Or perhaps he was just less reserved, his condition giving him a natural innocence and an inbuilt confidence. Both Cara and Ben had taken to popping in to see him while he was recovering, and she suspected he’d made a wide circle of friends among the medical staff. As soon as he’d been allowed out, he’d headed for the landing pad. He liked to fly, and nothing his father could say would persuade him that the psi-techs were evil and that flitters would not be a part of their world in the future.