Crossways (23 page)

Kitty had angled to join the party heading toward the settlers' new planet, but all the available space had been taken up by the advance team of psi-techs and the core group of settlers, the decision makers. She'd heard the planet's name mentioned several times, but Jamundi wasn't on any of the star charts. When Remus contacted her early in the morning the day after
Solar Wind
had departed, fully laden, she had to admit that she didn't know where the Olyanda settlers were going.

*How can you not know? You're a Navigator,*
Remus said.

*That's right, a Navigator, not a psychic. Look, Remus, I'm doing my best, but I don't get included in everything that happens around here.*

*Ms. Yamada wonders if your best is good enough. You haven't been able to get the platinum production figures for Olyanda. You don't know where the settlers are going. What else are you missing?*

*There's nothing to miss. The station heads, Garrick and Mother Ramona, are unhappy about the blockade, but shortages haven't begun to bite yet, so there's no general unrest. Serafin West is out of danger and likely to recover slowly. The psi-techs are busy building. Benjamin and Carlinni heard the news that Mr. Crowder had been appointed to the Trust's Board of Directors. There are no figures for platinum production on Olyanda yet because it's still too early. There is no production. It will take at least six months. I can't give you information that doesn't exist yet. There's a woman who thinks she can retrofit spacecraft with jump drives, but the word is that she's a crackpot.*

*Ms. Yamada asked you for the new IDs for the departing psi-techs.*

*I'm working on it.*

Now that her mom was free of disease, how hard did Kitty have to try to please Ms. Yamada?

*Remus, where's my mom? I want to know how she is.*

*All in good time.*

*The time's good now. I messaged the clinic. They said the treatment has been successful, but Alphacorp has moved her to somewhere with a better climate than Shield City.*

*Oh yes, much better.*

*I want to message her, hear her voice, see for myself how well she is.*

*When Ms. Yamada has her information. The platinum figures, the whereabouts of the settlers, the new identities of the departing psi-techs. In the meantime take my word for it that your mother is being very well looked after. She has the best of everything. Of course, she hasn't had the bill yet.*

*Bill?*

*Her accommodation is very luxurious.*

Kitty's heart began to pound. Her mother, formerly a data clerk, had been living on a very small welfare payment since her illness began. Her reserves were gone.

*Does she know . . . that you're going to bill her for everything?*

*Not yet, and she need never know as long as Ms. Yamada feels as though she's getting value for money.*

*I see.*

*Yes, I think that you do.*

Cara stared at the forward screen. Rena Lorient had chosen well. Jamundi hung before them, bathed in light from its yellow sun. Blue-green with intermittent cloud cover, it looked as close to Earth as any planet might be. Its second moon, an irregular rock barely big enough to be worthy of its status, orbited between them and the planet, leaving a small eclipse shadow on cloud and land alike.

Because they had to route through independent gates, the journey time from Crossways for the massive superliners was a month, but Rena, Jack, Saedi, and fifteen settler volunteers were on board the
Solar Wind
as an advance party, together with a small group of psi-techs led by Gupta. Cara had suggested Mel Hoffner as Gupta's second. She was the young medic who had proved so capable at dealing with the settlers back on Crossways. Ben had added four resourceful Psi-Mechs and several crates of bots, a botanist, an exozoologist, a surveyor, and two agronomists to the team, including Suzi Ruka, who had said if she was going to retire and grow cabbages she might as well plant them on Jamundi. Serafin would follow as soon as he was well enough. Suzi had seniority over both Gupta and Hoffner,
but she said she didn't want the headache of administration and would much rather just do her job.

It had taken only days to mobilize ten thousand settlers, but considerably longer to arrange for basic agricultural equipment, tools, temporary shelters, seeds, and provisions. Horses, cattle and sheep, chickens, pigs, and goats were more difficult to source with the quarantine still in force.

Marta, based in the organized chaos of Blue Seven, was still hunting down supplies as the superliners departed Crossways. Before they'd reached the first jump gate she had found five independent colonies willing and eager to sell surplus stock at the right price and contracted a commercial fleet to ship them, making sure the animals were well-sedated in the Folds.

Cara received the good news as Ben put the
Solar Wind
into orbit around Jamundi and set the long-range scanners working.

“It's beautiful,” Rena Lorient whispered as she gazed at the planet from space.

Jamundi's axial tilt gave it slightly more seasonal variety than Earth, but as it was springtime on the vast southern continent, Ben settled the
Solar Wind
on the edge of a broad river valley that had been the site of the original colony. Fast-growing sycamores had invaded the remains of stone buildings from the long-abandoned earlier settlement, but there were cut stones available to be reused once the Psi-Mechs and their bots had cleared the site.

After mistakes made on Earth—even at the height of the Great Colony Grab, humankind's first and fastest expansion into the galaxy—all the megacorporations and the independent settlers had upheld the Chenon Accord, which stated that no more than thirty percent of the land surface of any planet could be taken for settlement and the remaining seventy percent must be protected as a natural reserve. But Jamundi had originally been semibarren and any native growth had long ago been overtaken by the vigorous imported flora.

Fauna, too. A herd of bovines, descended from Earth stock, spooked by
Solar Wind
's approach, stampeded across the rolling grassland beyond the thick swath of trees that crowded along the river bank.

As the ramp lowered, Cara took her first breath of planetside air and looked out onto a virgin vista: tall trees to one side of the ship and rolling grassland to the other, if indeed it was all grass, since it was intermingled with blue-green growth exhibiting soft fronds. She sighed. It would end up being called grass since that was the nearest equivalent. That was the way it always happened. Humans always brought familiar names into unfamiliar landscapes. It made it feel more like home. In the far distance a range of hills rose to the horizon.

She smiled at Rena Lorient and stepped back. “It's your planet. Want the honor of being first down the ramp?”

“Should I? Is it safe?” Rena asked.

“We're right behind you,” Ben said. “Besides, the colony that failed didn't do so because of the planet. They found it mostly benign—at least, no more dangerous than Earth.”

“So only earthquakes, volcanoes, super storms, floods, blizzards, and wildlife to worry about?”

“You forgot landslides, quicksand, poisonous plants, and drought.”

Rena laughed. “So I did.” She walked down the ramp with a light, firm step and jumped the last stride, planting both feet in a puff of dust. “Jamundi, I claim you.”

An insect the size of a small sparrow fluttered upward with a startled chitter and several more followed it. They circled once and flew away.

Rena stepped back.

“Not dangerous.” Kayla Mundy, their exozoologist, was already tapping something into her handpad. “They're on the survey. Prey on a leaf-eating grub, so probably going to be the farmer's friend.”

“Well . . .” Rena gathered herself together. “I guess we'll get used to them.” She looked at Ben and Cara, who'd flanked her, and at the rest of the settlers and psi-techs on the ramp. “I'm going to make you all a promise. We made mistakes on Olyanda and I'm sorry for it. We'll probably make mistakes on Jamundi, too, but they won't be the same ones. We were too ready to think of ourselves as different from psi-techs, but we're all people and we should all treat each other with respect.”

Jack Mario started to applaud and everyone caught his mood and joined in.

“What about the Director?” one of the settlers asked.

“Leave him to me,” Rena said.

“And me.” Jack Mario stepped forward, still holding Saedi's hand.

Cara glanced sideways at Ben and saw that he looked satisfied.

*Were you expecting this?*
she asked.

*I was hoping.*

It had been five days on Jamundi, and nothing and no one had tried to kill them yet. Things were getting better. Cara had almost begun to relax. Of course it might all dissolve to shit when Lorient arrived, but so far, so good.

They set up a base camp for the newly arrived settlers, erected perimeter beacons, surveyed the surrounding area and agreed on a plan for the first year with Jack and Rena.

Suzi set about taking soil samples in the river valley and Kayla went with her, examining anything that crawled, ran, wriggled, or flew. The settlers started to erect temporary shelters using an old method of pumped quickset over an inflatable frame. The inflatables provided an interior lining and the quickset slurry added strength and durability and had the advantage of using local materials, mostly dirt, with a powdered catalyst.

Cara thought Ben began to relax a little, too. He hadn't been sleeping well, but he wouldn't open up to her. She figured that was down to a number of things. He seemed to want to keep her around, or said he did, but she'd brought him nothing but trouble, or, at least, compounded the trouble he had already. She'd put him in the position of having to kill van Blaiden. Admittedly it was self-defense, but Ben wasn't a natural born killer. He couldn't just take someone down in cold blood and shrug it off. Maybe it was different if someone was shooting back, but van Blaiden had been unarmed, even if his guards hadn't been.

Apparently she could kill and forget, and though she didn't like herself for it, at least she still slept at night. She knew that some of Ben's nightmares involved van Blaiden. But it was more than that.

Before they met he'd survived a pirate attack on Hera-3 which had killed three-quarters of his team and a few
thousand settlers. That he'd rescued fifteen hundred settlers and brought them out against near impossible odds didn't seem to count.

And then, before working for the Trust, he'd been in the Monitors, out on the Rim. Millions of klicks of blackness with too few personnel policing too many far-flung settlements, mining operations, and resupply hubs. He never talked about that, though Marta had known him then and said he did three tours despite the fact that most Monitors burned out after one. He'd once said that the bad guys didn't always wear black hats and she knew he'd had a run-in with at least one of his seniors, as evidenced by the recent altercation with Sergei Alexandrov and the Monitor ship.

Stress could be cumulative. Hell, enough stress could affect even the strongest person, and Ben was strong.

Now he was planning to search for the missing settlers without any personal recovery time and if that meant a run-in with Crowder, then so be it. In fact she suspected he would find a way to confront Crowder to resolve the unfinished business from Hera-3.

She counted the days on Jamundi as a holiday with nothing but straightforward, practical tasks.

And then the message came.

They'd spent a long day marking out blocks for the new town plan and were walking back to the
Solar Wind
, shoulder to shoulder. For a moment she'd considered reaching out for his hand. Though they still fell into bed together, exhausted, they'd not crashed through the sex barrier, and he might take hand holding as a sign.