Crossways

by Jacey Bedford

  He glanced across to where Cara sat at the comms station.

  “How are you?” he asked her softly.

  “Holding up.” Her short fair hair couldn’t hide the thundercloud bruise radiating across her cheekbone, and she held herself stiffly. He guessed her rib was still sore despite the fancy bone regeneration equipment in Solar Wind’s sick bay.

  He flexed his shoulder, knowing that only the drugs from his buddysuit dulled the pain of his healing burn. Neither of them had come through their trials on Olyanda without injury, but they were both still alive and upright, and that was what counted.

  Cara’s scars were more than physical, however. Broken bones and blistered skin healed faster than the deep mindfuck Ari van Blaiden had administered.

  But that was over now. He, Cara, and the rest of his crew were still flying.

  He turned to the newest member, still unproven, in the copilot’s chair. She was supposed to be, like him, a psi-tech Navigator, but he’d felt her doubt herself during the foldspace transit. “Kitty?”

  “Sorry, sir, I froze.” Kitty Keely combed her fair, shoulder-length hair off her face with her left hand and scrubbed at the back of her neck with hooked fingers to massage out the stiffness.

  She looked drained. Flying the Folds was tricky at best, deadly at worst.

  “It happens,” Ben said, remembering his first time flying a jumpship. “We’ll try it again another time. And I already told you, no need to sir me. We’re not in the service now—unless you want to go back to Alphacorp. I can still arrange that if you do.”

  “Uh, no thanks, si . . . er . . . Boss. I’ve had enough of big business.” She shuddered.

  And enough of the likes of Ari van Blaiden, Ben guessed. Cara had never told him the worst of van Blaiden’s excesses, but he’d seen enough. Young Ensign Keely had been sucked into van Blaiden’s plans just as Cara had been. She was in an impossible situation. He was almost obliged to offer refuge.

  That Cara had eventually come out of it sane was almost a miracle in itself.

  He glanced sideways at Cara again. Well, at least she seemed sane.

  Cara noticed and gave him a half smile, her gray-blue eyes crinkling at the corners.

  Sane enough.

  He dragged his mind away from Cara’s smile back to the job at hand.

  “You have the coordinates, Kitty?”

  “I do.”

  “Okay, take us to Chenon.”

  She nodded. “Estimated flight time eighteen hours.”

  *You trust the rookie with your shiny new toy?* Cara asked mind-to-mind as Kitty linked to the ship’s systems.

  *Ronan did a psych evaluation and gave her a clean bill of health. Whatever’s wrong with Alphacorp, it isn’t their flight training program. She’s a sound Navigator and a good pilot—in realspace anyway—Ari van Blaiden was wasting her talents having her run errands just because he liked her ass.*

  *She’s lucky she never needed to get on the wrong side of him.*

  *Like you did.* It was as close as he ever came to asking.

  *Yeah.*

  *About that . . . *

  *When I’m good and ready.*

  *Whatever you say.*

  She gave him another half-smile.

  “So . . . Chenon,” Cara said aloud. “Security’s pretty tight as I recall. How do you propose we get at Crowder?”

  “Quickly, before news of what happened on Olyanda breaks. I’m gambling that he’ll still be holding his breath hoping everyone is dead as planned.”

  “And if he isn’t?” Cara frowned.

  “Well, I guess we’ll have to improvise.”

  Crowder was their best chance of locating the diverted ark, carrying thirty thousand missing settlers frozen in cryo. Ben had vowed to find them.

  “Ship ahead. Closing fast,” Kitty said.

  “Identification?”

  “It’s not broadcasting any.”

  “Assessment.” Ben turned to tactical where Vijay Gupta, grizzled veteran of many military campaigns prior to joining the Trust as a security specialist, was quietly checking out Solar Wind’s armaments.

  “No weapons lock at present, but she’s running hot, torpedoes primed and ready. Do you want me to—”

  “Stand by until we see her intent.”

  “Got it, Boss.”

  “Cara?”

  “Trying to contact them now. Unidentified vessel, you are on a direct intercept course, please state your identity and purpose.” No response. “Unidentified vessel, you are on—”

  “Solar Wind, this is the Monitor Ship Lomax. You are impounded by law. Please stand down and prepare to be boarded.”

  Ben tried to control the adrenaline spike. The Monitors should be the good guys, independent law-keepers, but too often they were just the instrument of the megacorps. They relied on levies from the colonies to fill gaps where their fleet was thinly spread, which often put planetary interests over interstellar law. He’d been in the Monitors himself in what seemed like another life. He’d joined up to make a difference and found the law was not the way to go about it.

  *How in seven hells did they know we were coming?* Cara asked. *Maybe the mercs back on Olyanda have a long-range Telepath we don’t know about.*

  *How doesn’t matter,* Ben said. *They know, which means Crowder knows.*

  Gupta’s hands twitched toward weapons control.

  “Stand down, Gupta.” Ben held up a hand. “Once we fire on a Monitor ship we’re beyond the point of no return. Cara, patch me in.” He opened the vox channel on the collar of his buddysuit. Play the innocent for starters. “MS Lomax, what are your grounds? We’re civilian vessel Solar Wind out of Xerxos heading for Chenon. Our course is filed with—”

  “Solar Wind, we know exactly who you are and what you are. There’s a code red quarantine notice out for you, and in addition we have warrants for the arrest of Reska Benjamin, Cara Carlinni, and your crew. Three hundred persons in all.”

  “Do we look big enough to carry a crew of three hundred?”

  “Transmit us a full crew list, Solar Wind, and stand by to be taken to the nearest quarantine station.”

  “I want to see your warrant.”

  “Transmitting now.”

  “Got it,” Cara said.

  An official-looking document flashed up on the screen, long and detailed, with mug shots. A quarantine notice followed it, saying that Solar Wind was transporting plague carriers from Olyanda.

  Ben switched off his vox while he skimmed the warrant. “Murder, terrorism, armed insurrection, hijacking, grand theft, and kidnapping.” He raised one eyebrow. “Crowder must be getting desperate. Maybe I’ll admit to grand theft.” He patted the control pad. “Or does the acquisition of the Solar Wind come under hijacking? Personally I regard her as spoils of war.”

  “This is serious!” Cara snapped at him.

  “And I’m taking it seriously, believe me, but let’s find out exactly what we’re up against. Patch me into Lomax, please.”

  She did.

  He touched the vox again. “MS Lomax, the plague on Olyanda was a malicious false report.”

  “You know I can’t take that for an answer.”

  “Okay, then, another question: who am I supposed to have kidnapped?”

  “Forty thousand Ecolibrian settlers. You don’t know that, Benjamin?” It was a different voice on the comm now.

  It wasn’t the words that bothered him. He muted his vox again. “Shit!” He looked at Cara and shook his head. “I know that voice.” He hit transmit again without waiting for a response from her. “Sergei, when did they bring you back from the Rim? They must be getting desperate.”

  “That’s Prime Alexandrov to you, Benjamin. Why am I not surprised to see you on the wrong side of the law? It was only a matter of time.”

>   “You seem to forget which one of us was taking bribes back in the day.”

  “Unproven. And I don’t forget anything, including three months in rehab. You, however, broke every rule in the book.”

  “I bent them a little, but only when they didn’t make sense.”

  Cara didn’t interrupt with anything that might be overheard, but she quickly stood and moved to stand behind Ben, her hand on his good shoulder.

  *It’s a commercial warrant,* she said on a tight telepathic band.

  *Alphacorp or the Trust?*

  There was a slight pause. *Trust,* she said.

  *At least it’s not both. The day that Alphacorp and the Trust start talking to each other we’re screwed.*

  “Their missile ports have opened,” Gupta said, reaching for the weapons controls.

  Ben muted his vox again and shook his head. “Much as I’d like to fry Alexandrov, stand down. There are a hundred Monitors on that ship who are just doing their job. Kitty, bring the jump drive online. Quick as you can.”

  Ben squeezed Cara’s fingers and then he let her go to focus on the ship. “Everyone sit down and strap in.”

  Cara slid back into her seat and broadcast telepathically to the crew to alert them to prepare for the jump to foldspace without giving away their intent to the Lomax. Though they had cabins for thirty they were running a skeleton crew on this trip.

  “Lomax, stand down your weapons, we will comply,” Ben broadcast.

  *We will?* Cara asked.

  *Course not.* He closed down his vox.

  The Lomax fired an energy pulse. It went wide.

  “Is that the best they can do?” Kitty asked.

  “That was just a warning shot,” Ben replied. “The next one won’t go wide. Is the jump drive online yet?”

  “Thirty seconds,” Kitty said.

  “We might not have thirty seconds.”

  *Hold fire, Lomax. We’re complying.* Cara sent out a verbal and a mental broadcast that hit every Telepath in the Monitor ship. Even if Alexandrov had a personal grudge against Ben, his crew should make sure he stuck to protocol.

  Or not.

  “Hard shell torpedo launched,” Gupta said. “Twenty-five seconds to impact.”

  “Twenty seconds,” Kitty said without prompting.

  *Lomax, you’re not playing by the book,* Ben broadcast via Cara’s telepathic link. *Who’s your Second?*

  *Second Officer Jessop, here, Ben.*

  *Jess? Is that you? That prime of yours is going to get you killed. Pull away now.*

  *Too late. Sorry, Ben.*

  *No, I’m sorry. Hold on to your hat, Jess. Bumpy ride coming up. Stay out of our wake. Give my best to your kid when you see her again.*

  Ben engaged the jump drive and felt the yawning pull of the Folds.

  Cara is used to transiting foldspace through gates. Does a jumpship access different regions of the Folds? The disorientation is worse and the visions more vivid on Solar Wind. She feels as if she’s being turned inside out. First the ship is perfectly still and she’s sucked into her own personal vortex, then the whole thing reverses and she’s still while the ship whirls. She closes her eyes, realizes they are already closed, and forces them open. The flight deck looks normal except for the crew, all in various stages of trauma. Gupta has spun his chair around away from the weapons control, but the chair itself has turned two-seventy degrees, and now his hand is clawing for the board. Luckily he can’t reach it. Ben has both of his hands clamped on the arms of his chair and he’s pushing himself back, away from something only he can see.

  “Five seconds to impact,” the onboard computer announces calmly.

  No. Surely they’ve left the torpedo behind them in realspace. They are deep inside the Folds now, safely away from the MS Lomax.

  “Four.”

  Bloody hell, what’s the matter with the system? Does it think they are still in realspace or . . . Cara freezes. It’s theoretically possible that when the jump drive fired, it sucked in anything in close proximity. Oh fuck! They’ve pulled the torpedo into foldspace with them.

  “Three.”

  She manages to turn toward Ben.

  “Two.”

  He wrenches his head around to meet her eyes, nods and mouths, “It will be all right.” His voice catches up with her ears a split second later.

  “One.”

  The nose of a hard shell torpedo punches through the bulkhead silently and in slow motion, but there’s no rending of metal and ceramics, no explosive decompression sucking the air out of the flight deck, no flash of light or searing heat. Instead the torpedo pierces the flight deck and shoots out of the far bulkhead like a ghost, leaving not a trace.

  Ben grins, white teeth contrasting against warm brown skin, a mixture of relief and smug I-told-you-so.

  “To Crossways,” he says, his voice still half a second behind, like a badly synchronized vid.

  Where they should have been heading all along, Cara thinks. Ben’s anxious to find the missing ark ship, but it has been lost for months already. The settlers are either dead or they’ll wait a few more days. They need a little recovery time after the events on Olyanda. Hell, her rib is only half-healed and Ben’s shoulder must be hurting more than he lets on. She glances across at him again, but he’s focused on finding the right exit point from foldspace. Please let him do it before the ghost of Ari van Blaiden finds her again.

  She wonders what will happen to her and Ben now that Ari is dead. Can they reclaim their relationship? Maybe too much has happened.

  Ben’s making light of it, but sooner or later it will come to a head.

  Cara shook off the last remnants of her foldspace visions.

  Her screen bleeped.

  “I’ve got a visual on Crossways,” Kitty said.

  “Relay it ship-wide.” Ben hit the internal comms. “Take a good look, people, it’s going to be home for a while.”

  Cara stared at the screen as the scale resolved itself in her brain. The vast man-made habitat hung in space, orbiting a yellow dwarf star, Amarelo, at a distance of two AU. It looked as if it had been slung together by a lunatic with a giant construction kit. Its central spindle supported a series of fat doughnuts perched on top of each other like a child’s toy, probably the original station. From that had sprouted a huge outer assemblage of concentric rings which looked as though they had been made and remade several times over, expanding organically with encrustations and additions which owed little to long-term planning and much to immediate necessity. Massive cylindrical structures jutted from the outer rings, presenting weaponry always at the ready.

  White floods on the external docking cradles glinted off the solar collection tiles that covered almost every exposed surface. On opposing sides of the main station, two additional wheels, each big enough to be an independent station in its own right, pivoted on projecting arms.

  “I knew it was big, but . . . that’s big,” Cara said.

  She knew Crossways’ history, its grab for independence, but she’d never quite appreciated its size before. Seeing huge liners dwarfed by its bulk brought it home.

  “The outer ring is ten klicks in diameter, with eight levels,” Ben said. “And that’s before the additions. You’ve got to admire a good engineering project. The station supports close to a million people, and she’s armed to the teeth: pulse-cannon, torpedoes, lasers, and enough fighters and fighter drones to make even the Monitors wary of approaching without permission.”

  The Olyanda survivors were here, somewhere, saved from the immediate double-threat of plague and hostile incursion. Mother Ramona and her lover, Norton Garrick, the station’s head crimelord, had given assurances that they’d be safe, but how could any station, even one of this size, absorb ten thousand displaced persons?

  “See that section there”—Ben pointed—“the one
that looks as though someone’s taken a giant bite out of it . . .”

  “It looks like old damage,” Cara said.

  “It’s from Crossways’ war for independence,” Ben said.

  “But that’s a century ago,” Kitty butted in. “Couldn’t they have fixed it by now?”

  “It doesn’t look like they want to.” Cara kept her eyes on the screen. “Sometimes keeping the damage visible is a good reminder not to let it happen again.” She didn’t even realize she’d said that out loud until Ben glanced over with a sharp, suspicious look before turning back to answer Kitty.

  “Crossways survived and prospered while the megacorp that tried to subdue it withered,” he said. “That’s a point of pride for the locals, some of whom are descendants of the original revolutionaries.”

  “Not all criminals, then?” Kitty asked.

  “There are a lot of legal businesses, some legitimately occupied in supporting the illegal ones. In fact, unauthorized crime is dealt with just as quickly here as anywhere, perhaps even more harshly.”

  “There’s such a thing as authorized crime?”

  Ben shrugged. “Most of the organizations on Crossways have learned not to shit on their own doorstep. It operates in much the same way as any station, except with a wider range of services on offer, no questions asked.”

  Cara had experienced Crossways only once before, and it had not been under the best of circumstances. She wondered whether she would ever be able to settle here.

  Chapter Two

  A NEW HOME

  BEN TURNED TO CARA. “FOR BETTER OR worse, Crossways is home, at least for a while,” he said. “You once told me you didn’t want to live the rest of your life on a space station.”

  “I didn’t. I don’t. But we can’t go back to either Chenon or Earth, can we?” She shrugged. “Your home? My home? They’re all closed to us. We don’t work for the Trust anymore.”

  “I think Crowder trying to kill us makes a pretty good case for constructive dismissal,” Ben said. “Besides, we’re wanted criminals now.”