Empire of Dust

by Jacey Bedford

  “There was a time when I would have died for you, Crowder, but not anymore. You might still be useful, so . . .” Ben put the gun close to the side of Crowder’s head and pulled the trigger.

  The gas propellant exploded. The bullet took half of Crowder’s ear with it and buried itself in the wall where its explosive charge gouged a ragged crater in the medonite. Crowder’s shriek was lost in the fierce crack from the weapon, and he fell to the floor clutching his ear. Blood poured through his fingers as he whimpered with pain.

  “Consider it a kindness, Crowder.” Ben’s voice was low and barbed. “With only one eardrum you’re less likely to hear the ghost of a colony, screaming in the night.”

  • • •

  Late night on Chenon was dusk for Cara. She leaped to her feet by the riverbank where she’d come to chat to Ben in private. *Listen up, everyone. This is an emergency. I need the exact coordinates for the wheat delivery pod right now.* Cara flashed a broadcast. She quickly explained what she’d gleaned from Ben’s confrontation with Crowder. *If that pod’s open, we’re all dead.*

  What one knew all knew, and though there were one or two psi-techs on the verge of panic, the practicalities of the situation quickly asserted themselves, swayed by the consensus. The last thing they could afford was to run around in circles.

  Gen was on duty in Mapping; within a minute she’d come back with the coordinates.

  *I’m on my way.* Wenna’s thoughts were thick with sleep. She’d worked the night shift and was catching up with her rest. Cara could feel her scrambling for clothes and trying to manipulate her arm into some sort of working condition.

  No one knew how close the settlers were to the wheat pod’s drop zone. The best they could do was to get there before them if that was still possible.

  *I’m closest.* Sami Isaksten broadcast from the Seaboard Station. *I can get there in about six or seven hours.*

  *How many people can you muster?* Cara asked.

  *Only three of us. There’s me, Jon Moon, and Rufus Greenstreet.*

  *Get in the air as fast as you can! We’re on our way.*

  Cara felt Cas take over her open comm-link to coordinate the action. Gupta’s security team was the first airborne, with Wenna riding up front, followed closely by Archie Tatum and another Psi-Mech, who launched in their bot-carrier. The rest of the psi-techs raced for every available flitter.

  Saedi Sugrue grabbed the last two-man flitter and headed in the opposite direction to everyone else, toward the half-built city. *I’m not sure it can do any good, but it won’t do any harm. I’m going to get Jack Mario.*

  *Cara.*

  *Ronan?*

  *I have the medevac flitter on the landing pad.*

  *On my way.* The medevac flitter was the fastest emergency vehicle they had. Cara sprinted for the hospital, taking the stairs to the roof two at a time and almost falling into the passenger seat clutching the stitch in her side.

  *Hold on.* Ronan slammed the safety catches closed and hurled the sleek vehicle skyward with cursory pre-flight checks.

  Cara’s heart thumped in her chest.

  “Do we have a plan?” Ronan asked.

  “Yeah—improvise.” Cara shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose just telling them the truth and having them believe us would be too easy.”

  As they overtook Gupta’s flitter, he waved at them. *Hey, Doc, if they’ve opened this thing, will it do us any good to fry them all where they stand?*

  Cara went cold all over. She looked at Ronan and he shrugged. “If the bug’s airborne? It depends on what’s gone into making the little critter. I hope I don’t have to take a guess.” *I don’t know, Gupta, and that’s the honest truth.*

  *I brought engineering explosives—flashburners.* Gupta’s thought trailed off in a wobble as if he could barely bring himself to voice the idea. *I’m just saying, that’s all. What? I don’t like it, either. Okay, I’m sorry I mentioned it.*

  But the thought hung in the air. Cara tried to ignore it but wondered whether she could be responsible for burning anyone she suspected of being infected. She stared at the blackness beneath their wings, hardly seeing it for the horrors behind her own eyelids. If the cargo pod had been opened, everyone was dead anyway. Why not attempt to save some by sacrificing others? She blinked twice and pushed away thoughts of what might never happen, knowing that it could be their last desperate act if all else failed.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  RACE

  Ben heard a noise. The disturbance had alerted security. He pocketed the gun, retrieved his bloody buckle, and slipped through the door that Crowder’s heavies had come in by. This area was off limits to most of the staff. Crowder had his own way of getting in and out of the building when he needed privacy.

  Ben dropped the lock behind him and ran, soft-footed, down the corridor, not trusting to the antigrav shaft, but taking the emergency stairs. On the ground floor, he doubled back into the security room. One man was in there, flicking rapidly through the recordings.

  “Looking for a picture of me?” Ben leveled the gun.

  The guard stiffened but didn’t turn round.

  “I’ve got no quarrel with you, Scully, so just pass me the slide from that machine.”

  “Commander Benjamin? I’d know that voice anywhere. But they said you were . . .”

  “Dead? They exaggerated. That’s it. Don’t turn around, just pass the slide backward.” Ben got close enough, grabbed the slide, and then stepped back out of reach.

  “Scully, I’ve got a problem. Have you ever known me to lie?”

  “No, Commander.” Scully’s voice wavered.

  “Then I’m not going to start now. For your own sake, you never saw me tonight. The recorder wasn’t rolling. There’s no record of what happened in Crowder’s office. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean, do you really understand? Because if you get this wrong, you’re dead. Crowder won’t want any witnesses. The life of one security guard won’t outweigh that one single, simple fact. If you say you saw me, you’re a dead man, and it won’t be me pulling the trigger. Now do you understand?”

  “Yes, Commander Benjamin. I do. I really do.”

  “Good man. And you might think about getting a transfer to somewhere far away—soon—and take your family with you.”

  Ben slipped quietly out of the door.

  • • •

  “Get your stuff. We’re leaving now.” Ben slammed into Max’s hotel room with his bag already in his hand.

  “I’m coming.” Max knew when not to argue.

  In less than five minutes they were on their way to the port, and Ben had explained everything.

  “But how can he do that? Mass murder . . . I mean mass murder. I’d never thought about that before. At what point does murder become mass murder? Two, twenty, two hundred . . . two thousand? How can one human being do that to . . .” He subsided into silence.

  “Have you heard back from Cara yet?” Max asked for the fifth time since they hit the fast lane for the port.

  “You’ll know as soon as I do.” That wasn’t strictly true, of course, but Ben couldn’t see the value in turning over the what-ifs one more time.

  “Have you got ice in your veins?”

  Ben took a deep breath. “If I give in to what’s inside me right now, I won’t be any use to anyone. Get a grip.”

  “Hey, I’m not trained for this. You were a Monitor.”

  “Nothing trains you for losing the ones you love. I’ve done it once. I’m not about to do it again if I can help it. You can either help me, or you can set up house on Crossways and keep Mother Ramona company.”

  Max took a deep breath. “Her couch is a bit too soft. I’m with you.”

  “Okay, then. Keep it together, or keep out of my way.” Ben glanced across and caught Max’s anxious look. “Before I went to see Crowder, I set the recording system to survey his office. The whole lot, Crowder’s plan. Everything—including me killing the heavie
s—will be right there on the recording. There are three copies.” He handed one to Max. “I dropped the third off at my apartment. My family will find it if they look hard enough.”

  He should have contacted Nan any number of times since this thing blew up. Dammit, he could even have called the farm on a public link while they were on Chenon, but the more they knew, the greater the danger. He didn’t want his family involved.

  He swallowed hard. “Whatever happens, Crowder’s not going to get away with this.”

  The words whatever happens chased themselves around his brain. Ben slammed his fist into the side of the control panel. The pain in his knuckles helped to counteract the ache in his soul.

  • • •

  Please let them have bogged down to the axles in estuary mud or been headed in the wrong direction. Cara scanned all sides with an infrared scanner for Lorient’s wagons while Ronan kept them flying low and fast.

  “How long?” Cara asked.

  “About six hours. Get some sleep.”

  “No, you might miss them in the dark. Two pairs of eyes are better than one.” She tried the radio comm again, but got only static. “Damn this planet. Damn the damn settlers. Why the hell couldn’t they take a Telepath?”

  A cool gray dawn crept slowly over the horizon and painted the sky a dirty off-white.

  Finally there was a blip on the scanner.

  “There!” Cara pointed. “I can see the hoop of a wagon.”

  Ronan adjusted their course and Cara tried the radio again, only to get a burst of the usual static.

  “Still no radio contact?” Ronan asked. “Even when we’re within visual range?”

  “Uh-huh.” She shook her head. “And I don’t think we’re in visual range. That’s only a single wagon down there.”

  It was, indeed, a single wagon. They circled it, but the picture told its own story. A dead horse lay close by. There were no other heat sources, no other signs of life.

  “They can’t have left long ago,” Ronan said. “That means we have a chance.”

  “Yeah, but how close are we to the site?”

  “Close.” His mouth was set in a grim line.

  *We’re here—landing now.* Sami Isaksten reported.

  *What can you see?* Cara responded.

  *Wagons. Oh, fuck! By the way they’re drawn up—tents pitched, horses hobbled, fires burning low—I guess they’ve been there a while. I can see the pod, it’s half-buried, but there’s no one around it. I can’t tell whether the hatch has already been popped. Looks like they arrived late yesterday and have been camped for the night. I can see a few people stirring. No one looks sick.*

  *Whatever you do, whatever it costs, if that hatch is closed, don’t let them open it.*

  Sami, Jon Moon, and Rufus Greenstreet against a mob. Cara glanced sideways at Ronan and swallowed hard. Jon Moon was his lover.

  *We’re going down,* Sami said.

  Cara tried the radio again, but it yielded nothing. “I bet the bastards don’t even have it switched on!”

  *They’ve seen us,* Sami said. *They’re coming out of their tents.*

  “How long?” Cara asked Ronan.

  “Eighteen minutes.”

  *Eighteen minutes, Sami. Stall them. If they haven’t opened it, tell them the truth. Tell them it’s a virus. Only, for goodness sake, tell them to wait eighteen minutes.*

  No one talked about what would happen if they had opened it, but Cara was aware of a tight conversation between Ronan and Jon. She didn’t pry.

  She kept a light contact while Sami landed her flitter just off to one side of the pod and came face-to-face with a delegation of suspicious settlers. What could three of them do?

  “Can this thing go any faster?” she asked Ronan.

  “You think I’m not gunning it to the max?”

  She shook her head. Sami Isaksten, Jon Moon, and Rufus Greenstreet were hardly their most authoritative figures. Lorient probably wouldn’t even recognize their faces.

  “Don’t blow it, Sami,” she breathed.

  Ronan put out a reassuring hand. “She’s level-headed. She’ll manage. Jon’s great backup, he . . .” His voice cracked.

  Now it was Cara’s turn. She clutched Ronan’s hand, hoping to be of some comfort but finding nothing to say. Finally, as they came within sight of the pod and Ronan needed both hands for a landing, Sami’s jubilant cry hit them all like a ray of sunshine.

  *It’s still sealed. Thank the gods your ancestors worshipped and all their little angels. The pod’s still sealed . . . but Lorient’s not buying the plague line. It’s the truth, for goodness’ sake!*

  *Stall him. We’re here.*

  Below them, the estuary was at least three klicks wide with soft brown mud stretching out on either side. Where mud turned to coarse grass, Cara could see a circle of hooped wagons and a metal pod, about the size and shape of an airbus fuselage, scored and scarred by its journey through space.

  A crowd had gathered.

  Cara didn’t know whether she’d have any more success than Sami, but she had to try. Maybe she could get through to Lorient. Before Ronan had powered down, she was scrambling out of the hatch, ducking under the swept-back wing, and running toward the crowd gathering at the pod. She could see Sami, Jon, and Rufus standing defensively between the settlers and the hatch.

  A settler she didn’t recognize tried to tackle her, but he wasn’t combat trained and his balance was completely off. She sidestepped him, sent him crashing to the soft ground, and raced for the pod. Lorient turned to face her and motioned to his settlers to stand aside. Dragging in a steadying breath, she walked through the men—always the testosterone mob—and placed herself between Sami and Lorient, nodding at the psi-techs. Sami gave her a grateful look, and all of them gave her a telepathic greeting. She saw Jon Moon look anxiously to Ronan, who was pushing through the settlers.

  *I told him it was a plague, but he didn’t buy it. He thinks we want the wheat for ourselves,* Sami said. *I thought he knew about the platinum. Isn’t he expecting dirty tricks?*

  *I don’t think he knows what to expect. I don’t think he knows which way is up. I think Danny’s death has unbalanced him completely.*

  Cara quickly took stock of the situation. The pod had sunk up to its middle in the soft floodplain, and the main cargo hatch was half-buried and would have to be dug out by hand before it could be opened. There were seven wagons drawn up in a circle and about twenty men—no, make that twenty-four men; she’d just spotted more coming out of the far wagon. Oh, fuck, they had smart-dart rifles, probably loaded with enough anesthetic to drop a bull; not fatal, at least not singly, but a shot from one of those things would put anyone out for long enough for them to open the pod.

  “Mrs. Benjamin, I might have known . . .” Lorient eyed her warily.

  “Director Lorient. We have to talk.”

  “There’s been enough talk already,” one of the younger men called out.

  “Enough, Ed,” Lorient said, but the man stepped forward threateningly and Lorient had to put out his hand to reinforce his order. “We said we’d take care of the wheat. It’s ours. How can it be contaminated when it’s been packed in a sterile environment?”

  She took a deep breath. “Deliberately.”

  His face showed a range of emotions, but shock was quickly replaced by rage. “How dare . . . Are they trying to starve us to death?”

  “Starve, no. Director, can we talk privately?” If she could just get him alone, she could pour the information directly into his mind and he would know with absolute certainly that she was telling him the truth. And she was prepared to tell him the truth—all of it. But he just stood rigid. He wasn’t going to let her have her own way, and she could hardly let anyone guess that she could get inside Lorient’s head, least of all his own people. She tried another tack.

  “We’re all in this together. Someone wants this colony to fail, and they’re not bothered if the psi-techs get buried with it. This pod is carrying a bioeng
ineered plague, courtesy of the Trust.”

  As twenty-four voices supplied a soundtrack of surprise, anger, and disbelief, Ronan reached them and stood between Cara and Jon Moon, touching Jon’s hand in acknowledgment and receiving in return a tight little smile and a mouthed: missed you.

  Now they were five. Odds of five to one—easy!

  “Suppose we believe you.” Lorient quieted his men. “And I’m not saying we do.”

  “That wheat’s ours!” The young man called Ed shouted out.

  “You’re welcome to it.” Rufus Greenstreet, about the same age as Ed, bounced up and down on the balls of his feet, his pale face offset by florid pink circles on each cheekbone. He was close to losing it. How many weather techs ever had to face a mob?

  “Settle down, Rufe. You’re not helping,” Cara said as Ed moved forward with intent.

  “Ed!” Lorient snapped out a command, and the young man stopped in mid-stride.

  “If we wanted your wheat . . .” Cara raised her voice. “We could have beaten you to it and had it removed from the pod and shipped out on an airbus while you were still dragging your wagons over the floodplain.”

  “Maybe you did. Maybe you don’t want us to open up the pod and find it empty.” One of the older men that Cara didn’t know by name stepped up on the other side of Ed.

  “Where’s the logic in that? No, don’t tell me,” she said as he drew breath. She mustn’t get sidetracked. Victor Lorient was the one she needed to convince. “Director, please.”

  Should she try mind to mind or would that freak him out completely? In the distance she could hear the sound of flitters, the rescue squad.

  “There’s more of the bastards,” Ed shouted. “Quick, let’s get the wheat before their reinforcements arrive.”

  The crowd surged forward past Lorient as the five of them stood their ground, meeting the first wave of settlers head on.

  *Victor, listen to me. If you let them open the pod, we’re all dead.*

  Cara just had time to fire a message at Lorient and hope that there was enough residual implant to enable him to receive it before Ed came charging in and she twisted aside from his vicious tackle and dropped him with clubbed fists to the throat, not elegant, but effective. After that, it was a melee of ducking, punching, kicking, and generally trying to stay in the game without letting them pin her down, hoping the others were doing as well . . . or better. She took a ringing slap to the side of the head, saw lights crackle across her vision, and blinked hard to clear it.