Crossways

by Jacey Bedford

  *Is everyone all right?* Gen asked.

  *Take it easy,* Max chipped in. *It was hardly any time at all for us. I’m sorry you were worried. We were fine.*

  *Not even a void dragon,* Ben said. *Which, in retrospect, is odd. We’ll take a break, then try again.*

  *Call as you set off and as soon as you get back out. Now, can I talk to Max alone?*

  *Sure.* Ben pulled out of the conversation and felt Hilde do the same.

  Ben waited until Max and Gen had finished and Cara had closed the link. “Sleep first,” he said, “then we try again.”

  They tried again and again, each time with the same disappointing result and each time losing between one and four days in foldspace, depending on elapsed subjective time, but Ben wouldn’t give up.

  “We haven’t seen the otter-things or the void dragon since we began,” Ben said after the eighth try in what was four days to them, but twenty-four days in elapsed time. “Given the frequency of its appearance previously, how unlikely is that?”

  “Perhaps it’s simply lost interest,” Cara said.

  “Maybe, or maybe it didn’t like being asked to help.”

  “You asked it to help?” Lowenbrun said. “How did you do that?”

  “Asked might be too strong a word,” Ben said. “It’s so alien that there’s no real common ground, but it does have a little common language, mind-to-mind. It’s curious about us. I wish I understood why.”

  “If it’s so alien, how come it looks like one of our mythical nightmares?”

  “Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t,” Cara said. “Is that how it manifests because it picked up some deep-seated human fear during an early encounter?”

  Ben shrugged. “We don’t even know whether the big one is the same being every time we see it, or whether it’s an avatar of some strange interdimensional intelligence. Whatever it is, we need to attract its attention. It showed me an image of a ship entering and leaving the Folds. If it can recognize ships passing through, surely it can identify ones that enter and never leave again.”

  “And how do you propose we attract its attention?” Cara asked. “Wave at it through the window?”

  “Almost. Next time we go in I’m going to take a walk outside in the Folds.”

  “And what, precisely, would you like us to inscribe on your memorial stone?”

  He saw the look on her face. “All suited up, of course.”

  In truth he didn’t know whether the suit would make a difference. As if to remind him what happened last time, his wrist began to ache as it had done intermittently since he’d ditched the case and begun exercising it.

  “If you’re going outside, I’m coming with you,” Cara said.

  He swallowed the kneejerk refusal and bit down hard on his back teeth. Her decision. She was as capable as he was.

  She nodded as if she’d known what his first reaction would be and was pleased he’d overridden it.

  Cara suited up in Solar Wind’s locker room, carefully checking all the seals, connecting her buddysuit into the EVA suit’s circuitry and running through all the standard procedures. She felt heavy and stiff in normal gravity.

  *It doesn’t matter how many times I do this, it still gives me the shivers,* she said privately as Hilde double-checked everything from the outside and gave her a thumbs-up.

  *Don’t tell him that.* Hilde jerked her head in Ben’s direction. *I’ve seen that look in his eyes. Save me from overprotective people who want to save me.* She grinned.

  *Gwala?* Cara let her eyes rest on the big merc who was checking Ben’s suit.

  *No. Gwala would let me storm the gates of hell, though I guess he’d be right behind me if I asked him. Manny and I go way back. It’s my mom.*

  Somehow Cara had never considered that Hilde might still have a mother around to fuss over her. She was glad the suit helmet covered up her surprise.

  *Mom was a captain in the Militaire before she met my dad, but somehow she figured she’d be able to turn me into a society miss. Didn’t work.*

  *Good practice for when you need to dress up.* Cara remembered how natural Hilde had looked in expensive, well-cut clothes.

  *I clean up well.* Hilde laughed and drew Gwala’s attention.

  “You talking about me?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  *Ready?* Ben asked.

  *Ready,* Cara confirmed.

  *Prepare for transit,* Jake said from the flight deck.

  *Good luck,* Max added.

  Cara and Ben grabbed handholds while Hilde and Gwala clipped their own harnesses to safety loops on the wall.

  Solar Wind transits into the Folds.

  Cara sees Hilde pull at her earlobe as if the cabin pressure has changed, but insulated by the suit she feels nothing.

  Gwala opens the internal air lock hatch and Hilde clips a line onto each one of them, then she secures a second shorter line between them. *Don’t stay out too late, kids.*

  The air lock closes behind them and begins to cycle.

  When the air lock opens, Cara feels her jaw drop. Black and starless, the Folds assault her optic nerves with every color at once, like the iridescence on a crow’s feather. It’s not exactly like seeing, not at first. Gradually her brain gets used to it. There’s an aurora hanging above them, below them, and all around them, but instead of curtains of light, it’s curtains of darkness.

  *It’s . . . beautiful. Breathtaking,* she tells Ben.

  *What can you see?*

  *Colors, all of them black. An aurora, black again.*

  *You can’t see the void dragon?*

  *No, can you?*

  *Link closer. See what I see.*

  Cara gasps and jerks backward into the protection of her helmet. The void dragon, or a void dragon, is up close, its eye on a level with Ben’s faceplate. It looks at her. Recognition. It doesn’t use words, but its meaning is clear.

  *I know you, too,* she responds.

  That seems to please it.

  Ben puts the thought of the ark uppermost in his mind as a picture and a question. Cara reinforces it. *Lost,* Ben says. *Find.*

  The void dragon produces an image of Ben’s family farm on Chenon and for a brief instant ceases to be a dragon and becomes a giant cow.

  “I guess that tells us a lot about what these guys look like, or rather what they don’t look like,” Ben says over the suit comm. “They’re appearing as something they think we might recognize. Or it is. I’m still not sure if we’re dealing with one or many.”

  *No, they haven’t gone home,* Ben says. *They’re still here, somewhere.* He pictures the ark, pot-bellied, hanging against the black of foldspace, unmoving.

  This time the void creature pictures it back at him.

  Agreement.

  There’s a shift and suddenly Solar Wind vanishes to black nothingness. Below them, hanging in foldspace, is a different ship.

  *Cara!*

  *Yes. I’m okay.* Cara feels the tug on the line that still couples her to Ben. *Solar Wind?*

  *Gone.*

  *Gone where?*

  *You tell me.*

  *Is that the ark?*

  *Same bulbous belly shape but . . . might be a trick of perspective . . . I think it’s smaller.*

  Cara reaches out to the Solar Wind’s crew. *Can you hear me?*

  *Gods and little fishes! Where the hell are you guys?* Lowenbrun answers first. *You fucking disappeared!*

  *Good question, but we’ve found a ship, or rather our guide has. He’s skipped town, though, so we’re on our own. Max, can you get a fix on us?*

  *I don’t think . . . Yes, I can. It’s a bit wobbly but it’s there.*

  *Share it with Lowenbrun, see if he can follow your lead.*

  *I . . . Owww! Ease off, Jake. That’s my head.*


  *Sorry, bro. Yeah, okay, got it. Not sure how long this will take. Are you going to board the ship?*

  *Are we?* Cara asks Ben.

  *Well, we don’t seem to have anywhere else to go right now.*

  *True.*

  Ben uses the jet pack on his suit and tows Cara, as there’s no sense in wasting propellant. As they approach the ship it becomes obvious that this is not their ark, but rather a cargo vessel. The shape is similar, but it’s tiny in comparison.

  *There might be someone alive on board,* Cara says.

  *Or it might have been here a hundred years or more.*

  Ben reaches for the emergency activation on the upper access hatch set just behind the forward crew compartment. It’s likely that the cargo hold will be depressurized, since there’s no reason for the flight crew to access it in transit.

  The seal pops and the hatch cover opens outward. The air lock is only big enough for one at a time, so Ben goes first and reopens the hatch for Cara with the shipboard controls once the air lock has cycled.

  Emergency lighting partly illuminates the narrow corridor.

  “Breathable air?” Cara asks.

  “No. Still partial pressure, but it’s mostly nitrogen. There’s not enough oxygen and it’s cold as the grave. How long has she been here, I wonder?”

  Cara fingers a plate by an empty flight suit nook. “The last time they had a flight suit inspection was seven years ago.”

  “Ah.” Disappointment is evident in Ben’s voice. “I wonder what went wrong?”

  “Maybe we could ask our dragon friend if he shows up before our oxygen runs out.”

  “You know, it could just be that if we believe there’s oxygen, there will be.”

  “It didn’t work for them.” Cara opens the door to the flight deck to reveal three figures, two on the floor, and the third, in the pilot’s seat, encased in a space suit for a coffin, two discarded oxygen tanks at his feet, serenely upright. A glance at the faceplate of his helmet instantly reveals that he is very, very dead. Cara shudders and tries not to look too closely at the unsuited bodies.

  “Frozen,” Ben says. “By the state of them they asphyxiated before they froze. Still a slight blue tinge to the flesh and blood-black fingers.”

  “Do you always assess corpses?”

  “Sorry, old Monitor habits fade slowly. You couldn’t always call a coroner and you learned to recognize signs of cyanosis. About half the bodies I had to deal with suffocated in the black. Accidents, mostly.”

  *Three crew, all dead,* Cara relays to Solar Wind. *Looks like they sat here until they ran out of air. One of them suited up and used the oxygen tanks to give himself a few more hours. That must be the very definition of an optimist. The other two are corpsicles. Maybe been here six or seven years.*

  “It’s the Bellatkin.” Ben accesses the ship’s systems, which come online at a touch. “No shipboard malfunction.” He leans over. “They were transiting the Folds on instruments. I guess they lost the line.”

  Cara passes on the information.

  *Harsh,* Lowenbrun says.

  *I’ve found the record,* Hilde says. *A Ramsay-Shorre ship carrying vac-packed coffee from Blue Mountain. Crew of three.*

  *All accounted for,* Ben says. *We should try to bring her out of the Folds.*

  *Salvage?* Lowenbrun asks.

  *I was thinking more along the lines of getting word to these guys’ families.*

  *That, too, but the ship is salvage, right? And the cargo?*

  *Technically.*

  With the suit on Cara can’t see Ben’s facial expression, but his back is stiff. His parents were lost in the Folds on a cruise ship. They might have ended up like the Bellatkin’s crew. What is Ben thinking? She doesn’t intrude to find out. He’s all business as he checks out the ship’s systems.

  “Drive’s fine, it’s just life support that’s been powered down. Maybe the last thing Suit Guy did. I wonder how long it took them to run out of food and air?”

  Cargo ships don’t have room for intensively planted biozones that provide both food and air. Apart from the hold, the ship is little more than a flight deck with a crew compartment, sleeping cubicles, sanitary facilities, and storage, including a cupboard which reveals the ship’s doc-in-a-box, a diagnostic center still fully stocked with the kind of meds most likely to be needed by flight crews. Behind the box are three body bags.

  “The medical profession usually buries its mistakes. That seems to apply to old doc-in-a-box, too,” Ben says through the helmet comm.

  They bag the two exposed bodies and lay all three of them carefully on the bunks.

  “I wonder if we’ve got them in the right bunks,” Cara says.

  “I don’t suppose they’ll mind if we haven’t.”

  Cara checks her cuff readout. Three hours of suit air left.

  *Solar Wind, can you estimate your arrival time?* she asks.

  *We’re every place and no place at the same time, right?* Lowenbrun said.

  *That’s about it,* Ben replies.

  *Then we should be there already.*

  *Believe it.*

  *Oh, I am. I’m believing it like crazy, but there you aren’t.*

  So as not to waste precious oxygen they sit quietly, shallow-breathing. Cara glances at her readout. Two hours of air left.

  Ben looks up from the control console. “I can see the line out of here to the Crossways gate,” he says. “And the drive is functioning. Let’s take the Bellatkin home. Connect to Lowenbrun.”

  Cara does.

  *Can you see the line to the Crossways gate?* Ben asks.

  *Yes.*

  *Meet us at the other side and we’ll transfer back to Solar Wind in realspace and take the Bellatkin in tow.*

  *You want us to leave you in the Folds?*

  *You can’t find us, and we’re running out of air, You need to get Solar Wind out. Who knows how much time has passed out there?*

  *How much time?* Max chipped in. *Don’t tell me I might be a father already?*

  Ben doesn’t answer.

  *Seriously, how much time?*

  *Let’s just get out while we’re still breathing and worry about that later,* Ben says.

  Cara straps in to make the transit through the Crossways gate. “How close can Lowenbrun get on the other side?” Cara asks.

  Ben shrugs and checks his cuff readout. “Maybe not close enough.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  AIR

  CROSSWAYS’ GATE SPAT OUT THE BELLATKIN into realspace.

  *Jake? Max? Hilde? Gwala?* Cara had felt them all drop out of the gestalt as they crossed the gate horizon and now she’d lost them completely. It was as if Solar Wind didn’t exist.

  “I think they’re still in the Folds,” she said on suit comms.

  Ben swore softly. She didn’t catch it all, but she heard Lowenbrun’s name in there.

  “Crossways Control to unknown vessel. Identify.”

  “The ship’s comm is still working,” Cara said, patching it into their suit vox. “Crossways Control, this is salvaged ship Bellatkin. Cara Carlinni and Ben Benjamin on board. We’re suited up with less than two hours of air left. Appreciate two air tanks or we’re going to be docking on fumes.”

  They were still two hours out from Crossways.

  “Well, well. I hope you’re going to say pretty please. Tell Benjamin we’ll trade him air tanks in exchange for the promise not to emerge from the Folds close enough to set off all our proximity alarms.”

  “Quit teasing, Crossways Control, I promise,” Ben said. “Get your ass into gear.”

  “Already on it, Benjamin. The Free Company has been alerted. There’s a pilot scrambling right now.”

  *Ben? Cara? We’re on our way.* Ronan’s mental voice cut in. *Yan and I are in the Dixie, full tanks prepped
. Estimate intercept in one hour forty-two minutes. How much air have you got?*

  Cara glanced at Ben and then at her own readout. *One hour thirty-eight minutes.*

  *How much in reserve?*

  *That is the reserve. Step on it.*

  *Conserve what you can.*

  *Yeah.*

  *You got all that?* she asked Ben. At least they didn’t have to use up extra oxygen to speak.

  *I got it.*

  *You’re the better pilot. You need to be fit to dock with the Dixie. Let me fly the bus until then while you go into shutdown mode.*

  It almost scared her that he didn’t protest, but with the mental equivalent of a caress he almost immediately dropped into a meditative state that would hopefully use up less oxygen from already depleted supplies.

  Cara minimized all necessary movements and concentrated only on keeping the Bellatkin on course. She tried not to think about running out of air, as that would only cause her to overbreathe and panic. She set the ship’s alarm system to sound as soon as the Dixie came within ten klicks and settled back, watching her helm display count down to zero oxygen.

  How long had she got after that?

  Minutes.

  How many minutes? Enough?

  She hoped so.

  With two minutes of oxygen left on her readout she nudged Ben and contacted Ronan. *Estimated time to rendezvous?*

  *Five minutes,* Ronan said.

  *Ben?*

  *I’ve got four minutes left, how about you?*

  *Two.*

  *You can make it. Go into shutdown mode. Leave the rest to me. I love you.*

  *I love you, too.*

  She knew he’d share his last breath with her if she asked him to, but it didn’t make sense. She closed her eyes and concentrated on taking the shallowest of breaths. Her head began to ache and she wanted to fall asleep. What would happen if she let herself drift into the arms of Morpheus? It wasn’t such a bad way to die . . .

  Her mother is standing over her. “Why did you let him do it?” she asks.