Crossways (28 page)

Where had he been? What had happened? He thought he remembered, but were they his real memories? Donida McLellan had thoroughly fucked with Cara's head and her real memories had taken months to surface, and then only slowly and painfully. But it had taken McLellan weeks to work on Cara, he'd only been in the Folds for . . . He checked his handpad, expecting it to tell him that minutes had passed. Thirty-three hours. Nearly a whole fucking day and a half! How long had he spent in the Folds and how much of that time was due to the time differential?

“Time.”

The ship flashed the time onto the screen. It matched the time on Ben's handpad.

“Is there anyone else aboard this ship?”

“Negative.”

“Has anyone else been aboard this ship since we left Port 22.”

“Negative.”

“Do you have audio and video recording of the flight deck for the whole time of out flight.”

“Positive.”

“Step through it. Show twelve frames per minute.”

The image fast-forwarded across the screen. Just as Ben
remembered it showed him standing, floating up with the momentum and disappearing from out of the range of the lens, which wasn't positioned to show the ceiling. Some time later gravity returned and he reappeared from the direction of the access ladder.

It didn't help.

“Do you have video of the ship's hull during the time I was out of camera shot?”

“Negative.”

“You didn't record?”

“The hull cam is black.”

He shouldn't expect anything else. Hull cams were always black in the Folds.

He shivered and pulled the emergency blanket tighter around his shoulders. He didn't know whether he was still affected by the deep cold of space or whether it was fear. He wasn't used to being disconnected from his sense of location. He closed his eyes and reached out with his mind.

Nothing.

“Coordinates.”

The forward screen sprang into life with a star chart. Ben stared at it and blew air out past clenched teeth. “Well . . . fuck, and double fuck. That's . . . not good.”

“May I recommend—”

“No you may not!” Ben cut the ship off. It was going to recommend a jump through the Folds that would carry them halfway across the galaxy. And without his implant he was helpless to navigate. He'd have to rely on the automatic systems.

And there might be another one of . . . those things.

His gut churned at the thought of the void dragon.

This was ridiculous. He'd never been afraid of flying the Folds before. But on previous occasions he'd always been completely in charge. Now he felt helpless. The chance of getting through foldspace was significantly reduced when flying on automatics.

And now he knew what was out there. Waiting. He'd looked into infinity and it had looked back.

“If I may make a suggestion . . .”

Ben jumped awake at the sound of the ship's voice. He
was slumped in the pilot's chair, not even realizing he'd closed his eyes.

He knew what it was going to say.

“Suggest if you must.”

“Your vital signs are erratic. If you intend to return to the Folds you should do it now while you still have strength.”

“I don't have my implant.”

“Suggest switching it on.”

“No. I don't
have
my implant.” He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath which stabbed him in the chest. “Implant is malfunctioning.”

“Understood.”

“Is that all you can say?”

“Your implant is malfunctioning. There is no other human aboard this vessel. Therefore if the vessel is to reenter the Folds it must be done on the automatic guidance system.”

“How long to travel back to Crossways through realspace?”

“Forty-four thousand years at best speed.”

“That's what I figured.” He pushed down the roiling snakes in his stomach. He shivered, chilled to the marrow, while sweat beaded on his forehead. Damn, his hands were shaking. The Folds loomed like a bottomless pit in his imagination. Dragons swirled in its depths. The souls of the dead—his dead—swam up in front of his eyes, glared accusingly and sank down again. Ari van Blaiden, knife buried to the hilt in his eye socket, loomed up.
You were the only one who deserved it, bastard!

He swallowed hard. There was one way out. Not a good way, but maybe better than facing the Folds again.

“Make the calculations.”

“Calculations complete.” The answer was immediate.

“Are you sure? Have you checked them?”

“Calculations complete.”

Bloody hell, the machine managed to sound offended.

He strapped in. “Go on then, do your worst.” Hmmm, maybe not the best way to phrase it. “Take us to Crossways in . . .” He glanced at his handpad. “Five minutes from my mark. Mark.”

The ship began to count down.

Ben prepped the sedative, dialing the lowest possible
dose. It should put him out for no more than a quarter hour. He cradled it to the side of his neck and started to count. By three he was pleasantly light-headed. By four he was sinking. By five the darkness of unconsciousness was coiling through his brain.

C
ARA WOKE NOT KNOWING WHAT TIME IT WAS or whether she'd slept for a minute or a day. The room was still dark.

“Lights,” Cara said, and the overhead panels began to glow, gradually increasing in intensity.

Someone, Gen probably, had been in while she slept and left fresh underclothes. Of course, all her clothes had been in the cabin on the
Solar Wind
. The cabin she shared with Ben.

Ben.

A hole opened up and threatened to swallow her. She skirted around it.

Pretend it's an ordinary day.

She hit the bathroom and went through her usual morning routine, emerging into Wenna's office ten minutes later, clean if not bright.

“Cara, how are you feeling?” Wenna looked up from her desk. “I know. Stupid question, but it has to be asked.”

“I slept. I don't know how. I don't even know for how long.” She glanced at her handpad. “Oh two hundred. It seems I slept the day away.”

“You did. Ronan said not to disturb—”

“That's okay. Catch me up.”

“Mother Ramona says it was the Alphabet Gang, highly skilled operatives. They were the ones Ben worked with to steal
Solar Wind
from van Blaiden in the first place.”

“She got them, right? Tell me she got them.”

Wenna shook her head. “Garrick closed down all outbound flights, but we figured they cleared the station within ten minutes of setting those limpets.”

“Fuck!”

“Yes, as you say.”

Cara didn't even ask if the Telepaths had managed to contact Ben. It would have been the first thing Wenna told her. Hell, they'd have woken her up. So . . . no Ben. What next?

She backtracked. “Ben's Nan. We still need to spring Nan and Ricky. Ben would have wanted that.” Oh, gods, she was saying it as if she believed he was gone . . . dead.

“Of course.”

“And find Lorient's missing settlers.”

Wenna looked uncomfortable. “Some of the crew are talking about shipping out.”

“You've got to hold them together, Wenna.”

“Me?”

“You were always Ben's second.”

“That's what I'm good at, being a second. I'm not . . . I don't have . . . any desire to run the whole show. You need to step up.”

“Me? I'm an outsider. I not only came late to the party, but I brought trouble with me.”

“Everyone knows how Ben feels . . .” She swallowed hard. “Felt about you.”

“Gah! Later. I'll think about it later.”

“There may not be a later.”

Cara took a deep breath.

Ben would want this.

She gave herself five minutes to prepare, then opened up a broadcast to catch all the Free Company currently on-station.
*You all know what's gone down.*

There was a ripple of assent, a sense of loss, condolences, uncertainty.

*It's hard—for all of us.*

Agreement.

*And I know some of you are thinking about cutting your
losses. There's no shame in that. Take your share of the platinum and have a nice life.
*

A mixture of relief, denial, confusion, guilt.

*We're all hurting, but Ben left us with a job to do and we have already split our strength.*
Fifty psi-techs had shipped out to Jamundi with the settlers.
*Thirty thousand settlers are still missing. Lost. Nobody looking for them except us. And Ben's family, back on Chenon, in danger because of what we did on Olyanda. The Free Company's still here, still working. I'd appreciate volunteers to help finish what we all started.*

*I'm in it for the long haul,*
Wenna said.

*Max and I are here. Goes without saying,*
Gen added.

*I'm saying it,*
Ronan chipped in.

*Me, too.*
Archie Tatum and Yan Gwenn started a flood of responses.

In the end they lost only nine people, and they were ones who'd been borderline about deciding to stay with the Free Company. That left a hundred and fifty-two committed psi-techs, and another fifty on Jamundi.

“Well done,” Wenna said.

Cara shook her head, not knowing how to answer.

Wenna took her hand. “You know you're not alone, right?”

*Not alone.*
The door whooshed open and Gen entered, followed by Max carrying a tray of coffees in cups with Blue Mountain logos on them.

“We didn't know how many to bring.” Max put the cups down on Wenna's desk. “May have overestimated.”

“I'll take one.” Ronan was barely a few paces behind.

“If there's a spare . . .” Archie followed him in.

They all took a cup.

“A toast,” Ronan said. “To Ben.”

“To Ben,” they echoed, raising coffee cups.

A dam inside Cara shattered. She gulped and sobbed, trying to get words out. “We should be toasting him with tea.”

Once she let go, Cara cried so much that her eyes puffed up and her nose blocked, and still she couldn't stop.

“Is . . . this even . . . normal?” she asked Ronan, who had
ushered everyone else out of the office and stood patiently with Cara's head buried in his waist, one hand resting lightly on her back.

“Don't worry about normal,” he said. “There's no such thing as normal in a situation like this. Everyone deals with it differently. You might feel lots of emotions all mixed up: shock, grief, anger, regret. . . . It's still too fresh, you've hardly accepted that he's gone yet. I know I haven't.” He let her snuffle some more and then handed her a tissue. “Did you know Kitty had been seeing Wes Orton?”

“Wes?” Cara tried to recall who Wes Orton was.

“One of Garrick's security guards. He was killed when the docking bay depressurized.”

“Oh, Ronan, I'm sorry. I'm so busy thinking about myself.”

“Garrick sent a team out to recover the bodies sucked out of the air lock. Lewis Bronsen volunteered to go with them. They brought them all home.”

Lewis was a phenomenally good Finder. Cara wondered whether his talents worked in foldspace.

“I can't bear the thought of Ben being out there, alone, in the cold and the dark.”

“I know. We've all lost a friend.”

“I shouldn't hoard all the grief for myself. That's such a Ben thing to do. How long has Wenna known him? She's worked with him on so many missions. Gen, too. They used to be . . . close. And Serafin . . . I know you went rushing off to the old man yesterday. How is he?”

“Sedated. Mildly sedated, not out cold. I can offer you—”

“No thanks. I'll cope.” She sniffed and Ronan passed her another tissue.

“Thanks.” She applied the tissue and then cleared her throat. “We were . . . still getting to know each other. There never seemed to be enough time to . . . just swap stories. You know. Our time on Olyanda lurched from one crisis to the next. What about you? When did you meet Ben?”

“I think it was my first mission for Crowder, Ben's third. We were escorting a bunch of scientists and exozoologists to Connemara, the planet, not the place in Ireland. There was a settlement there already, but these guys wanted to study what looked like archeological remains out in the rain
forest, so they needed a nursemaid crew since no one from the settlement was willing to volunteer. Can't say I blame them either. Bug-ridden place with temperatures hotter than hell and enough humidity that it was like breathing soup. There were a fair few poisonous critters, too, some of them actively looking for humans, others just out to poison each other.”

“Sounds charming.”

Ronan shrugged. “Didn't figure Ben had much of a sense of humor at first. He can be, could be, a bit dry . . .”

“Yes, I know.”

“Besides, it was the sort of place that any sense of humor you might have brought with you would have hightailed it back to the nearest settlement—mine certainly left me quickly enough—but Ben managed to keep smiling. Nothing fazed him. About ten days into the trip he found a critter, not one of the poisonous ones, but it was pretty strange: six legs, about the size of a sheepdog; not so cute unless you think bug eyes are sexy. Anyhow, it seemed to take to Ben and pretty soon it became the camp mascot. He called it Trixibelle. Having Trixibelle around kinda lightened the atmosphere a little bit. Helped us all get through.”

“What happened to Trixibelle when you left?”

“Ben found a home for her at the settlement—a family with two kids. And then he had pins made for everyone with her face on them.”

“He should have had pins made for all the Olyanda survivors with Lorient's mugshot.”

“Or maybe Crowder's.”

For some reason she found this funny and laughed until her sides hurt and then laughed some more, knowing that if she stopped she'd cry again.

“Is this a party anyone can join?” Mother Ramona stood in the doorway.

Cara waved her inside. “Ronan was just telling me about the first mission he went on with Ben. When did you first meet him?”

“When he was in the Monitors. He came here chasing someone—someone I was happy for him to remove from circulation as it turned out. Oh, he wasn't in uniform, but I'm a specialist in fake IDs. Spotted his a mile off and sent
one of my . . . associates to check him out. My guy got his ass handed to him on a plate, so instead of sending two guys I went myself. Had a little talk. We conducted some business.”

“On your couch?” Cara asked, knowing Mother Ramona's method of sealing business deals.

“As it turns out, yes.” She smiled. “And I ended up giving him my access code for the next time he passed through Crossways.”

“Thornhill Renaissance.”

“That's the one. Next time he came with a boatload of Burnish refugees, artisan glassmakers, jewelers, and metalworkers and their families, displaced by a land tussle between Eastin-Heigle and Arquavisa. His orders were to take them to a subsistence camp on Dounreay—a pretty inhospitable place by all accounts. He wanted new idents for them so they could settle on Scarra where there were opportunities for artisans.”

“And you provided them?”

“For a consideration.”

“Money?”

“An exchange. I needed someone taken to safety. Scarra was as good a place as any. I wouldn't have asked Ben if I hadn't known his word was good.”

“His word was always good,” Cara said. “And we have to make it good again. His Nan's in trouble and there's still Lorient's settler ark to find.”

“We may be able to solve the problem of his grandmother. Crowder's got her as hostage, right?”

“We presume.”

“So once Ben's declared legally dead, why would Crowder need to keep her?”

“You think it's that simple?”

“It's worth a try. We've got a lead on the perps, the Alphabet Gang. Garrick thought we should give them time to report their mission a success before we terminate them with extreme prejudice. Oh, don't look at me like that. Don't you want to see them dead?”

Cara nodded.

“The Alphabets have worked for me and Garrick, and I introduced Ben to them. They turned against me and mine
for money. That's not something we can forgive. We'd never be able to trust them again. There's a code and they stepped beyond it.”

“I should—”

Mother Ramona shook her head. “This job's ours. On the house. Garrick and I agreed that having you all on Crossways would be an advantage. Garrick wants to spruce up our reputation as a free-trade port, play down the shady side, attract legitimate business. You don't do that by letting incidents like this happen without sending a clear message. The Alphabet Gang is toast, but we'll give them time to be useful first.”

“Crowder sent them.”

“We don't know that for sure, but if he did, then he's yours.”

Cara nodded. “Mine.”

She understood why Ben had been reluctant to kill Crowder in cold blood when they last met. Ben and Crowder had been friends for a long time. Maybe Ben didn't want to believe that Crowder was irredeemable. Cara didn't feel any need to give him the benefit of the doubt. Crowder was a dead man. He just didn't know it yet.