Ben inclined his head and looked at the crowd. “Wenna says I have to listen. I’m listening.”
“We wanted to let you know we’ve decided to stick together,” Gen said. “With you, that is. No one here intends to desert.”
“It’s not about deserting,” Ben said. “It’s about family and commitments and about independent people deciding where they want to be. I’m not Commander Benjamin anymore. No one has to do what I say.”
“Well, since Crowder slapped a warrant on all of us, where can we go?” Gen asked. “First listed as dead, now listed as, at best, Typhoid Marys, at worst, criminals on several counts. We’re probably the most wanted semi-corpses in the galaxy.”
“There are plenty of colonies where one of Mother Ramona’s new identities wouldn’t be questioned,” Ben said. “Anyone with a partner and children or parents and siblings at home might want to gather their family and start again. Their platinum share will give them the resources to do it.”
“And they might prefer to bring that family here and stay with a group of people they trust and a boss who looks out for them,” Gen said.
“There’s no longer anything for me to be boss of.”
“There’s the Free Company.”
“What’s that?”
“Us. The Olyanda survivors—most of us—or two hundred and eleven of us to be precise.” Gen waved expansively. “The Free Company doesn’t belong to you, it belongs to all of us. We’ve all agreed to invest half our platinum money, and we’ve elected you as boss. Max is our accountant, Wenna our company secretary.”
“And what do you expect the Free Company to do?”
“Anything. It doesn’t even have to be legal.” Gen frowned. “That is, if it breaks a few stupid laws, we don’t care, as long as it’s moral. While the platinum holds out it doesn’t even have to make money.”
Cara had been watching Ben. He’d been trying not to react, but she recognized his small tells. Body inclined slightly forward, mouth set in a line as if he was deliberately trying not to smile. Oh yes, he was up for it.
“I can’t do anything until we’ve found the missing settlers,” Ben pushed out the suggestion and waited to see whether it would float.
“Then that’s our first job,” Gen said. “Come on, Boss, you know you don’t really want to cut us all loose.”
“On one condition,” he said. “That you can un-elect me any time.”
“It’s a deal,” Gen said.
Cara saw a smile begin to twitch at the corners of Ben’s mouth. That’s settled, then, she thought.
Kitty waited until the general hubbub had died down. Everyone was excited by the prospect of the Free Company and it took a while for them to disperse back to their temporary accommodation. Three of Yan Gwenn’s ship engineers stayed behind to familiarize themselves with Solar Wind’s systems and to check for any nonstandard mods they still had to find.
Gupta had called all his security team to a meeting on the dockside, twenty-three of them, hardly an army, but Gupta was taking the attack at the warehouse more than seriously and was going over options and revising procedures.
Which meant he had more than Kitty Keely on his mind.
She tagged along behind the last few stragglers heading back for the stadium.
Better them than me, she thought to herself. By being no trouble and keeping a low profile she’d kept her berth on Solar Wind, which meant she could watch whatever move Benjamin’s renegade psi-techs made next. Of course, it hardly mattered to her if they did something to hurt the Trust. In fact if they did, it could only benefit Alphacorp.
There was no getting close to Ben Benjamin. She’d flashed her most dazzling smile at him a couple of times, but he hadn’t even noticed. He was never less than polite and professional, but it was pretty obvious that he only had eyes for Cara, even though she wasn’t totally sure it went both ways. Cara had been messed up by van Blaiden. It took a while to get over that.
There was no one else worth pairing up with. Ronan Wolfe was utterly gorgeous but settled in a relationship with Jon Moon. Wenna would be the obvious one to chase, but Kitty had watched her closely for days and still didn’t know where her preferences lay, if, indeed, she had any. Wenna never showed any interest in either males or females. If Kitty made advances and was wrong, she’d mess things up. She certainly wasn’t going to settle for Gupta or Yan Gwenn, or someone further down the food chain. They were definitely not the first people to know what was going on.
Maybe it was better not to form relationships with any of the psi-techs, though it wouldn’t do any harm to get on the right side of the cute guard, Wes. He’d already helped her to get one message out to “Mother,” though she hadn’t had an answer yet.
Time to go and see if he was on duty today.
She slowed down to let the others get ahead as they neared the entrance to Port 22. There was one guard on the gate, and she could see Wes inside the gatehouse.
He stepped out just as she got there.
“Hey, Kitty.” He really did have a nice smile; she had little difficulty returning it.
“Wes.”
“Going somewhere? I get off duty on the hour.”
She checked station time on her handpad. Fifteen minutes. “I could wait. I was just going to explore.”
“Let me take you on a guided tour. I thought you lot weren’t supposed to go anywhere on your own.”
“I won’t be on my own.” She winked at him.
“I suppose not.”
Five minutes later Captain Syke arrived with six fresh guards and Wes’ shift ended.
“Sorry you had to wait.” Wes lifted off his helmet and scrubbed at his scalp one-handed. “Damn thing just makes you want to have a good scratch once it comes off.”
“Good to be off duty, huh?”
“Sure is.”
“I’m not spoiling any plans, am I?”
“Not a bit of it. I was going to Ag One, but I can go later. There’s a community farm there. I volunteer.”
“On a farm?”
“Community farm. They keep domestic animals, chickens, goats, sheep, pigs, a horse, a couple of ponies, and cows in milk. It’s for the kids. Crossways kids only ever get to see animals like that on vids. It does them good to see what they feel like and smell like, even though most of their protein comes from a vat. There’s nothing bigger than a cat allowed outside of the farming area, and that’s only to keep the rat population down.”
“And you volunteer?”
“Sure. I show the kids how to milk the cow and I lead them around on the ponies. Not just me, of course. There’s a rota.”
“Well, you are a surprise, Mr. Orton. I’d love to see your farm sometime.”
He held out his hand and Kitty took it.
Chapter Five
QUARANTINE
“HOW ARE YOU FEELING, MR. JUSSARO?” Crowder leaned over the recovery bed. “Dr. Zuma tells me the implantation was a complete success. Ready to join the living again?”
Jussaro blinked, then smiled.
“Before we activate your implant fully, there are conditions, but you knew there would be, didn’t you?”
“I guessed as much.” The smile faded, replaced by wariness.
“You’ll be leaving as soon as you’ve recovered. I want you to go and find your friend, Carlinni. That’s no great hardship, is it? We’ll even give you passage and a cover story.”
“I won’t kill for you.” Jussaro’s mouth was set into a hard line, but there was worry behind his eyes.
“Of course not. I wouldn’t ask you to.”
“Information, then, is it?” Jussaro looked relieved.
That was the trick. Make them think the worst and then when you asked for something smaller it didn’t seem so bad.
“Information.” Crowder nodded. “I’m not a mind re
ader, but I’m guessing right about now you’re wondering what’s to stop you from skipping out on your obligations. Am I right?”
Jussaro didn’t answer.
“Of course you are. So you need to know about the modification to your implant.”
This was almost too easy. Jussaro’s reactions were too predictable. He began to wonder whether the man was as naïve as he seemed. Maybe he was feeding Crowder the reactions he thought were expected of him. It didn’t matter. Crowder had him sewn up.
“Modification?”
Was that a hint of fear in Jussaro’s question? He hoped so.
“There’s a switching device in your implant; effectively a kill switch.”
Jussaro shrugged, not giving anything away in his expression now. “What does it do, blow the top of my head off?”
“Nothing so crude. It induces an electrical cascade in your brain, a stroke. You might survive it, barely, in some kind of vegetative state perhaps, but your implant won’t.”
Crowder let the information sink in. “We can trigger it from anywhere. You can run, but you can’t escape. And just in case you’re wondering, there’s a dead-man switch. If I don’t hear from you every seven days your implant is toast. And, of course, if I die . . .”
Jussaro’s eyes widened.
“Carlinni and Benjamin have several good reasons to want me dead. You have a very good reason to want me alive. I’ll expect to hear from you on a regular basis, or rather, my Telepath, Mr. Leyburn will. I won’t be opening up myself to the possibility of attack. I know what Cara Carlinni did to Mrs. McLellan. Your friend is a dangerous woman.”
“Is she? Tell me more.”
Ben had an appointment with Norton Garrick and Mother Ramona before going to the warehouse.
“Coming?” he asked Cara. “Or would you rather meet me there?”
“I’ll come.”
He felt absurdly pleased.
They took a tub hubward, accompanied by two silent guards in full-face helms, hurtling into the fast lane to make the six-kilometer journey in just under ten minutes. The Mansion House was right in the middle of Crossways, in a district known as Center-Spindle. It faced out across Hub Park, a green space surrounded by the homes of the wealthy. The artificial azure sky, far above their heads, seemed convincingly real. Built on Palladian lines, the Mansion House’s main living area was above street level and accessed by an impressive outer staircase leading to a columned portico. It almost looked like real stone, a clever artifice. On the ground floor, below stairs, Norton Garrick had his personal offices, distinct from Crossways’ administrative headquarters, which were a block back from the hub.
Garrick’s slight figure and pale skin stretched tight across the planes of his face spoke of deprivation in his youth, but his clothes and the single small diamond in his earlobe showed the restrained good taste of someone who no longer needed to flaunt excessive wealth. His brown wavy hair, cropped stylishly short and graying at the temples, could have belonged to a businessman rather than the pirate that he was, or maybe had been. Whatever Garrick’s former occupation, he’d reinvented himself as an entrepreneur and politician. Crow’s feet around his eyes spoke of a ready smile.
He wasn’t smiling today.
“Bastards!” Garrick spat the word out and then looked up. “Not you two. Bloody Alphacorp. They just stopped a shipment of provisions at the Athabasca Terminus. The bogus quarantine notice for Olyanda has been extended to Crossways. We appear to have taken in ten thousand plague victims and are now in imminent danger of infecting all human life in the known universe. Any ship docking on Crossways won’t be allowed to dock in Alphacorp or Trust ports without spending ninety days in a designated quarantine holding area. In other words, the independents can deliver their cargo here, but they’re not going to be able to trade anywhere else for three months after that.”
“Just Alphacorp and the Trust?” Ben asked.
Mother Ramona entered the main office from a door at the back of the room. Today she wore an elegant business suit that contrasted sharply with her marbled skin. “Arquavisa has just been panicked into joining in. The rest will follow. That means we’re under an effective trade embargo. No supplies in, no goods out—from and to the megacorps-held planets anyway.”
No station in space, especially one the size of Crossways, was entirely self-sufficient, despite intensive food production. It would take a while for shortages to kick in, probably nonessentials at first, but once it started to hit the staple food stocks it wouldn’t be pretty.
“How long before supplies run out?” Ben asked.
“A couple of weeks before people start to notice they can’t get everything they want. A couple of months before supplies get dangerously low. We could introduce rationing, but that’s going to cause unrest.”
“You don’t need this,” Ben said. “Forget the warehouse, we’ll go.”
“Where to?” Garrick gave him a level look.
“Fair point.” Ben shrugged.
“Besides, Alphacorp has always wanted an excuse to stick it to us. You could leave tomorrow, but they wouldn’t lift the embargo. We have to change our trading patterns to deal with the independents only—build up new networks.”
“Where are the nearest independent planets?” Cara asked.
Mother Ramona hit a panel on the desk and a holographic galaxy materialized in the center of the room. It was very like the one Crowder had in his ops room, and for a moment Ben was back to being a young ex-copper staring at Crowder’s favorite toy in amazement as colonies twinkled in front of his eyes. In the intervening years he’d helped to put more bright white dots on the map. He located them: Rostov, Occania, Kemp’s World, New Canada, Eyonore . . . and there was Hera-3, glowing blue to designate it as a platinum planet administered by the Trust.
Alphacorp’s colonies were green, Arquavisa’s yellow, Ramsay-Shorre’s red, and a number of others glowed in shades in between. Dotted among them all were worlds he didn’t recognize, picked out in violet.
“Those are the independents,” Garrick said.
“I didn’t realize there were so many.” Cara stepped in past Ben to get a closer look. “That’s quite a network.”
“Plentiful, but not close,” Garrick said. “In the past it’s suited us that Crossways is off the beaten track with only one jump gate, which we control. A lot of the independents have picked their locations carefully, far enough away from a jump gate that transit is going to take anything from four to twelve weeks. Many of them are happy to trade with us, but we have a logistics problem. Did you enjoy your coffee this morning?”
“Mmm, lovely,” Cara said.
“Very kind of you to send it, thank you.” Ben tried not to look at Cara as he sidestepped the question smoothly.
“From here.” Mother Ramona pushed her arm into the hologram and brushed her finger across a violet world in the Perseus Arm of the galaxy. “Blue Mountain, the ultimate coffee-producing planet in the Tegabo system. Settled by a breakaway bunch from Drogan’s World. Their nearest gate is fifteen weeks out from the planet.”
“And while coffee is not an essential . . .” Garrick said. “Well, not to me at any rate.” He took a sidelong glance at Mother Ramona and gave a twitch of a smile. “Cereals would take eleven weeks’ transit from Prairie, bulk protein powders five weeks from Massukos, even supposing they have the surplus to help us. If they don’t, then the next nearest producer of any size is Keynes, which is nine weeks from its nearest gate.”
Ben stared at the hologram. “The megacorps don’t have quite the monopoly on fast transit that they think they have,” he said. “But it would certainly help if we had a few more jumpships. That would solve a lot of transit problems.”
“You said ‘we,’” Mother Ramona said.
“Huh?”
“You said ‘if we had a few more jumpships.’ We, not you. Does
that mean that you’re with us?”
Ben blinked twice. “I guess it does. I can’t speak for everyone. Some of the psi-techs want to leave and find somewhere quiet to settle down, but over two hundred are staying.” He glanced sideways at Cara, but her face was expressionless. He wished he knew where her head was.
“The scruffy engineer woman!” Mother Ramona snapped her fingers several times, pressed her lips together and screwed up her eyes. “What was her name? Kept busting through security to rant about retrofitting jump drives.”
“Kennedy,” Garrick said.
“Dido Kennedy, that was it. Didn’t you give her a few hundred creds and tell her to go away and work on it?”
“Seemed to be the best way to get rid of her.” Garrick shrugged.
Ben jumped at the news. “Someone’s working on retrofitting jump drives?”
“Don’t get excited, Benjamin,” Garrick said. “It could all have been hot air.”
“Worth checking out, though.”
“On your own head.” Garrick shrugged. “You’ll find her in Red One. Woman is mad as a bag of snakes.”
“And it’s not a very nice neighborhood,” Mother Ramona added. “Take backup.”
“You think there will be assassins?”
“In Red One they could all be assassins if you look like a victim. Nothing personal, but half the folks down there are looking for a business opportunity, and that could come from anyone who looks as if they have something worth stealing. Even the underclass has an underclass.”
“Noted. It’s worth investigating, though. Jumpships are the way forward. I’ve used some of the independent gates,” Ben turned down the corners of his mouth. “Some are old but robust. Others are held together with string and a prayer.”
“I don’t think there’s one person on this station who can fly a jumpship, Benjamin,” Garrick said. “Or at least, no one who’s owned up to it. Just you and Miss Marling so far. Jumpships are important, but so are pilots to fly them. If we can retrofit, buy, or even steal jumpships to bring in supplies, we’re still going to need pilots and Navigators who’ve got what it takes. Can you train them for us?”
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