Crossways

by Jacey Bedford

  “I’d like you to try coattailing,” he said. “And if that works out, the Bellatkin needs a permanent crew.”

  “You mean the Benjamin Maneuver?” Alia asked.

  “I’d really like to get away from that name.”

  “I’m afraid you’re stuck with it, sir,” Grigor said.

  “No need to sir me, Grigor.”

  “Okay, Boss.” He grinned.

  Ben had them zip in and out of the Folds a number of times and then, using a hulk marked for scrap, he had them sashay up close and draw it into the Folds.

  “Whoa, cool!” Grigor says as they pop into foldspace, the hulk in their shadow.

  “Now comes the hard part,” Ben says. “You have to bring it out again, and in the Folds all your instruments will be lying to you. You need to get close.”

  Grigor nudges toward the hulk. “Readout says ten klicks.”

  “Don’t believe it.”

  “Should I use the screens?”

  “Won’t do you any good.”

  “We can always stick our head out and take a look,” Alia says.

  “Uh, if you say so.” Grigor nods.

  Alia says, “I’ll do it.”

  Ben doesn’t say she can just float up through the outer skin of the Solar Wind as if it isn’t there and breathe in the void. If her belief falters for a second it will kill her as it almost killed him.

  He sits back to see how the couple will handle it between them.

  Alia suits up and clips herself on a line in the upper air lock. When the lock has cycled she emerges halfway.

  *It’s close,* she says. *Maybe only one klick, though distance is hard to judge. Starboard maneuvering thrusters only in half-second bursts.*

  *Copy,* Grigor says, and nudges one more time. *Again?*

  *No that’ll do it. Port thrusters, half second on my mark. Mark.*

  Grigor blips the port thrusters and cuts the Solar Wind’s glide. They still overshoot and touch the side of the hulk. Instead of ship-on-ship collision, the hulk slices through the cabin like a ghost.

  *Oh, shit!* Alia ducks back into the air lock in alarm and slams the hatch. She reaches the flight deck just as the hulk slides out of view.

  “I suggest now would be a good time to swing out of foldspace,” Ben says calmly. “You aren’t going to get any closer than this.”

  “Right.” Alia flings herself into the nav chair. “I’ve got the line back to Crossways. Let’s do it.”

  “Whatever you say.” Grigor hits the jump drive.

  They popped out of foldspace fifty klicks from Crossways, the hulk in one piece barely two klicks away.

  “Pretty good for a first attempt. Just don’t exit the Folds until you’re sure the two vessels aren’t joined. Could be messy.”

  “So, we’ve got the job on the Bellatkin?” Alia asked.

  “You’ve got the job.”

  When Ben finished checking the rest of the Vraxos pilots he cleared them all for jump-drive flight except for Esterhazy, who hesitated for too long when trying to find the line out of the Folds.

  “I can do it. I can do it,” the older pilot kept saying, and second time around, it did, but Ben was doubtful and put it on the reserve list.

  “Don’t worry, you’ve still got a job. There are ships without jump drives and you’re fine on gate jumps,” Ben said. “There are plenty of pilots with higher Nav ratings than you who can’t see the line either.”

  Ben dropped into a chair opposite Norton Garrick in the basement office beneath the Mansion House. “I’m keeping the Kazans for the Bellatkin, but I’ve got two jumpship pilots for you,” he said. “Chilaili and Tama Magena are good enough to start training others. Gen has two more pilots almost ready, Valois and Singh, but this will be the last lot she can deal with before the baby.”

  “Understood.” Garrick laced his fingers across his chest and swung back in his seat. “Thank you.”

  “Have you got enough jumpships?”

  “Nine new ones, so far. I just need pilots to fly them. We’ve offered Kennedy a workshop facility on level four, but she won’t leave Red One. Says all her friends are there, and besides, she’s working on something special. I think she’s still trying to crack the platinum recovery algorithm.” Garrick shrugged. “Good luck with that.”

  “But her jump-drive retrofit is sound?”

  “It checks out in every way.”

  “Is Olyanda protected?” Ben asked.

  Garrick nodded. “It’s safe enough for now. There’s a planetary defense grid in operation, but a massive fleet attack would be a problem.”

  “Let me know if you need any help. We have a vested interest in Olyanda. In fact, as Max pointed out, without it we’re pretty much bankrupt.”

  Garrick cleared his throat. “I won’t pretend that we’re not—shall we say—overextended as well.”

  “I thought . . . Oh never mind.”

  “What? Have vast personal fortunes? Well, I’m not saying we don’t, and combining mine with Mona’s—plus what we appropriated from my predecessor in, well, let’s just call it a hostile takeover—gave us a pretty good start, but Crossways has always been run on cooperation between . . . business enterprises.”

  “You mean crimelords.”

  “If you want to be so indelicate about it, yes. I have to keep them all happy. Happy or dead. Legitimizing Crossways may not be without its casualties, but there’s no future in crime. Not when the megacorps get away with murder and we’re persecuted for the occasional bout of free trade—”

  “Piracy.”

  Garrick chuckled. “There are some who might call it that, but I swear, Benjamin, if this trading network holds up, we’ll be squeaky clean in the future.”

  “You can’t vouch for all your citizens, Garrick, but you’re already cleaner than the megacorps. One step at a time.”

  “Indeed.”

  “So what do you need? What can we help with?”

  “At the moment we have our fleet split between Crossways and Olyanda. A jump gate closer to Olyanda that cuts down on traveling time would give us a chance of moving our non-jumpships between here and there. Until we retrofit more ships with jump drives and train the pilots to use them, our situation is precarious.”

  Ben laughed. “A jump gate. That’s a tall order. Don’t hold your breath.” He thought for a moment. “Kennedy says her new modifications are powerful enough to handle the biggest ships. If I send Yan Gwenn to Jamundi to retrofit the ark, once the unloading has finished Lowenbrun can bring her home. She’s big enough to fit fifty of your hornets into her hold, which is a good way of getting them between here and Olyanda in a hurry.”

  “You trust Lowenbrun?”

  “I think I do.”

  Garrick grinned. “Go for it.”

  “Everything all right with Garrick?” Cara asked. “How’s his bid for galactic domination?”

  They stood in the lineup for lunch along with twenty other psi-techs, shuffling forward, trays at the ready.

  “Brave given the circumstances, or foolhardy, I’m not sure which.” Ben switched to private conversation. *He’s on a financial knife-edge just like we are.*

  *I didn’t realize.*

  *No one does, and he wants to keep it that way. If his creditors find out they’ll close in for the kill.*

  *Of course. My thoughts are sealed. I hope Olyanda doesn’t turn out to be a poisoned chalice.*

  *The risks are huge, but so are the rewards.*

  They reached the front of the lineup. Ben checked the board: razorfin on a bed of paruna grain or vat meat lasagna. “What do you fancy?” Ben asked.

  “Uh, razorfin, I think.”

  “Hmm, I think you’re right.” He placed a plate of fish on Cara’s tray and helped himself to another one, smiling at the server who was refi
lling the hot cabinet. She smiled back and pointed to the dessert counter. “Last two,” she said. “Strawberries from the farm.”

  “Nice.” Ben scooped them up and added them to the trays. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  They took their food to a table close to where five of Tengue’s people were busy tucking in to the lasagna.

  “So what can we do?” Cara leaned in and kept her voice low. “After all, we need Garrick to stay in business.”

  “I asked the same question.” *He wants a jump gate.*

  *Garrick wants a jump gate?* Cara asked, her fish temporarily forgotten.

  *Closer to Olyanda—and one not under control of the megacorps. It makes sense. The one they’re using at the moment is too far out to be really useful, though it’s big enough to take freighter traffic. I told him not to hold his breath.*

  *Ambitious.*

  *That’s Garrick. You’ve got to admire the man. In the meantime I’ve offered to retrofit the ark with a jump drive. She’ll hold fifty hornets. It’s not as good as a jump gate, but as an interim measure . . . *

  Ben applied himself to the fish and the grains. The sauce was buttery with a hint of lemon. Nice.

  Cara finished hers and reached for the bowl of fresh strawberries. She ran a thumbnail around the top of one plump berry and pulled the calyx away, then stopped with the fruit halfway to her mouth.

  *What would happen if you flew Solar Wind close enough to a jump gate to drag it into the Folds?* Cara asked. *Would there be some enormous feedback loop? Would foldspace end up tied in knots?*

  *I suppose it depends whether the gate was active at the time. Why do you ask?*

  *I just wondered why, with all the assembled criminal minds on Crossways, no one had ever thought of stealing jump gates.*

  Ben stared at her and blinked.

  Ben’s feelings were on the smug side of self-satisfied as he watched Alia and Grigor Kazan and their two children, Donna and Vel, examining Bellatkin inside and out. The newly recoated and refurbished cargo ship stood in Port 22, gleaming. Her refit included one of Dido Kennedy’s jump drives, a device not much bigger than a coffin and secured in the ship’s drive housing.

  “She’s sweet,” Alia said. “Boxy, but sweet.”

  The ship was about as wide as the Solar Wind but twice the length. Much of her bulk was cargo hold, two separate cubes contained inside a single skin with rounded corners suspended from a spine that extended into a long high “tail” that gave her an insectoid profile, somewhat like a dragonfly. She had an extendable high upper wing for atmospheric maneuvering, though Ben suspected her aerodynamic qualities were somewhat bovine.

  “Is she ours?” Vel asked.

  “We’re her crew. She doesn’t belong to us,” Grigor explained. “But we get to call her home.”

  “All of us? You’re not leaving us in school here?” Donna asked.

  Grigor looked to Ben.

  “That depends on the run,” Ben said. “There might be some trips that are . . . less appropriate.”

  “You mean smuggling,” Donna said.

  Ben held out his hand, palm down and waggled it. “Free trade. It’s up to your parents, but your apartment in Blue Seven is still yours, so you have a choice.”

  “But we can come on the shakedown run, right?” Vel said, his eyes dark and wide.

  His sister nudged him. “Stop putting on the doe eyes, Vel, or you’ll get yourself grounded for being impossibly cute.”

  Ben laughed. “Yes, you can both come if your parents want you to, as long as you sit quiet and do as you’re told.”

  “We know the routine,” Donna said, older than her brother by about five years and wiser by five decades.

  “Yes, okay. We’ll only be out there for three or four hours,” Alia said. “We just need to check out the way she handles and the new jump-drive retrofit.”

  Ben settled into the spare bucket seat on the flight deck and the children strapped themselves into the crew seats while Alia took the nav chair and Grigor the pilot’s couch, resting both hands on the control panels.

  “Easy. Easy.” Grigor spoke softly to himself as he negotiated Port 22’s air lock and out into space.

  The comm crackled into life. “Crossways Control to Bellatkin, you are cleared to proceed and reminded that jumps to foldspace within a hundred klicks of Crossways are strictly forbidden.”

  “Bellatkin to Crossways Control. Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “Good to hear, Bellatkin, but I believe you have Ben Benjamin on board.”

  “Fair point, Crossways,” Ben said. “But I’ve only done it in an emergency. Besides, I’m in the passenger seat, today.”

  The comm crackled and Vel laughed until his sister gave him another sharp dig in the ribs.

  Ben sighed. “She’s all yours, folks. Let’s see what she can do.”

  At exactly the hundred-klick mark, Alia and Grigor linked telepathically and the Bellatkin dipped into the Folds and out again, still close enough to see Crossways as a dot in the distance. Grigor experimented with the maneuvering thrusters and tried various seat positions, then flying both with and without internal gravity.

  “One more jump,” Alia said. “I want to do another quick bodkin jump, in and out, this time to ten thousand clicks distant from the station.”

  Once more they connected mind-to-mind and the Bellatkin transitioned smoothly into foldspace and out again.

  “Sweet,” Alia said. “Oh, shit!”

  On the forward screen, upside down to their orientation, a whole battle fleet hung in space. Two huge Monitor battlewagons flanked ships from Alphacorp, Eastin-Heigle, Arquavisa, Ramsay-Shorre, and Rodontee. The Sterritt Corporation was the only one of the megacorps without representation. Behind them a gate that should not exist flashed as it spat out a cruiser decked out with an Alphacorp insignia.

  “I think the phrase you’re looking for is ‘Let’s get out of here!’” Ben said as he began to count ships.

  The Kazans linked again. As the three leading ships fired missiles, they shivered into foldspace sideways.

  “Was that a whole fleet?” Vel asked.

  “Shh, not while they’re concentrating,” Donna said. She reached over and took hold of Vel’s hand, the only sign of tension being her white knuckles as she squeezed his fingers.

  “Blow the rules, take us right up to the front door,” Ben said.

  “Your ship, your rules,” Alia said, and popped them into realspace barely ten klicks from Crossways.

  “Crossways Control to Bellatkin. I told you—”

  “Crossways Control, there’s an Alphacorp fleet ten thousand clicks from here and heading this way,” Ben said. “Emergency enough?”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  INCOMING

  *SCRAMBLE SOLAR WIND,* BEN SAID AS HE ran down the Bellatkin ramp. *We need to destroy that gate before any more of the bastards get through.*

  Cara brought Mother Ramona into the link.

  *I’m here with Garrick,* Mother Ramona said. *What have you got for us?*

  *A combined fleet, backed up by two Monitor battlewagons,* Ben said. *Thirty ships that I saw, but more still coming through.*

  *How the hell did they—*

  *They built a gate, ten thousand klicks out. They’ve been planning this for months.*

  *How long have we got? Time to bring in reinforcements from Olyanda?*

  *Hours at most now that they know we’ve seen them. The jumpships are the only ones that could make it in time, and they’re all here anyway. First things first. Their gate needs to be destroyed and ours taken offline.*

  *We can take ours offline from here.*

  *Do it.*

  *And theirs?*

  *Can you lend me three hornets?*

  *Of course.*

  Ben tu
rned to the Kazans. “I want you to take one hornet in each of your cargo holds, get them as close to that gate as you can, drop them and hop straight back into the Folds. Wait until you see the gate go down, then return for a pickup. Take as few risks as possible.”

  Alia and Grigor hugged their children and pushed them away. “Go straight back to Blue Seven and stay there unless you get specific safety instructions,” Alia said.

  “What about you?” Vel asked.

  “We’ll be busy.”

  “What can you do? You can’t fight a fleet in a cargo carrier!” Donna’s voice squeaked.

  “They won’t have to if they’re quick,” Ben said. “Do as your parents tell you. Can you do that?”

  “Yes.” Donna took hold of her brother’s hand and ran against the tide of incoming crew who were dashing for Mother Ramona’s and Garrick’s ships while Syke’s guards locked down the port and donned rebreathers and atmo suits.

  “Your children are a credit to you,” Ben told the Kazans as Donna and Vel disappeared through the inner gates to the concourse.

  They nodded. “If we don’t come back . . .”

  Ben didn’t give reassurances he couldn’t back up. “The Free Company will look after them as long as there is a Free Company.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ben briefed the three hornet pilots, all well-drilled as part of Crossways’ defense fleet, then the hornets were loaded, two into the Bellatkin’s holds, and one into the Solar Wind’s. They launched and, within fifty klicks of Crossways, winked out into foldspace.

  Solar Wind’s stripped-down crew consisted of Ben, Cara, Yan Gwenn on systems, and Gwala on tactical. Ben looked around the flight deck. “Let’s make this quick or we don’t stand a chance.”

  “Quick as you like,” Cara said.

  “Quicker the better.” Yan nodded his agreement.

  Gwala just nodded.

  They popped out of foldspace above the gate and Yan immediately dropped the hornet from their hold. Bellatkin materialized and dropped two hornets, then, while the nearest Alphacorp ships were maneuvering into a firing position, sideslipped back into the Folds to await a recall.