Crossways (29 page)

Kitty avoided Cara as much as she could. There was only so much grief she could take and Cara's was palpable. In fact Blue Seven was a big old pile of grief. It was Ben this and Ben that. Did any of the psi-techs care about Wes and the other dead guards?

Kitty found her feet taking her to the cab lane and she automatically programmed in the coordinates for Port 22. The hangar was empty except for the little Dixie Flyer and one of Mother Ramona's smuggling ships docked in one of the repair gantries. Yan Gwenn and an odd-looking woman in half a buddysuit had the drive casing off the Dixie. Yan waved and Kitty waved back but didn't go over to start a conversation. She'd come down here to get away from psi-techs.

Syke nodded an acknowledgment, almost a formal bow. He was going through the motions, but even behind his usually impassive expression Kitty recognized emotion. It was tightly constrained, but it was there.

Ellen Heator pulled off her half-helm and scrubbed her hair just like Wes used to do, except Ellen had considerably longer hair. “Kitty, how are you?”

“All right, I guess. Well, no, not all right if I'm honest. You know.”

“I do. I'm not sure I can do this anymore. I'm thinking of resigning.”

“I heard that, Heator,” Syke said. “Come into my office.”

“You don't have an office . . . sir,” Ellen said.

“I'll have to make one, then.” He led her gently into the guard post and thirty seconds later the four guards who'd been in there came out and stood looking at each other.

When Ellen came out again she still wore Garrick's colors on her sleeve.

“Not leaving, then?” Kitty asked her.

Ellen just shook her head. “Syke said if I really wanted to go I could, but give it a few months. He didn't want to lose anyone else from this team. He said I might feel differently if I waited. Said I'd gain perspective. I might, I suppose. But what if I don't want to?” She cleared her throat. “You should come over and help me clear Wes' apartment.”

“I was thinking . . .” Kitty said. “Is it up for grabs? I wouldn't mind staying there . . . for a while at least.” She jerked her head over her shoulder. “Then we wouldn't need to clear it.”

“As far as I know the rent's paid up two months in advance. Are you looking for perspective, too?”

“I don't know what I'm looking for.”

Ricky watched the big guard, Minnow, slap a blast pack to the side of Nan's neck, then quickly looked back down to the slate he was pretending to read.

Minnow had dropped the slate off after Ricky's last escape attempt with a gruff, “Here, kid, this'll keep ya occupied.”

Ricky had plenty on his handpad to keep him occupied. He'd even caught up on all his homework and had worked ahead on a bunch of math problems and done some of the extra reading for his project on pre-meteor Earth history, but Minnow's slate, a basic model with no connectivity, sadly, was a welcome distraction.

“Look, kid, I know it's hard, but settle down and ya won't get hurt and neither will Granny.”

Nan was his great-grandmother, but he didn't bother to correct Minnow. It was only a halfhearted attempt at a veiled threat and Ricky paid it no mind. He'd already figured out that they weren't in any immediate danger, but the uncertainty was eating at him. Surely Dad had reported them missing by now.

Ricky had only a vague idea of how the police might go about looking for them. Was kidnapping serious enough to call in the Monitors? They mostly operated on newly established colonies where there wasn't such a good local policing system. Chenon had been the first colony. The founders had left Canaveral Spaceport pre-meteor, so it was a point of pride that Chenon considered itself culturally superior. It had the oldest uninterrupted strand of human history. North America had been smashed back to the Stone Age by the meteor, but the Chenonites had preserved the best of it: a pioneering spirit, democracy, education, and law.

“What ya readin' today?” Minnow asked, shoving the remains of the blast pack into his pocket.

“The Curse of the Chinese Whisper,” Ricky said. “It's set on Earth, before the meteor strike, before jump gate travel, even. What's a Chinese Whisper?”

“Something 'at comes from China, I expect,” Minnow said. “China was a town once, way back, a big town somewhere near Australia and they had black and white bears. Got flattened by the meteor. I ain't read that Chinese Whisper one yet but my wife finds all this quirky old stuff an' puts it on my slate.”

“Nan read me
Don Quixote
once. That's quirky and old. From before people even got off the planet.”

“Donkey Hoeteh? Ain't even heard o' that one. I'll tell Ginny to look for it.”

“It's weird, but good weird.”

He thought Minnow was softening toward them. He'd brought Ricky an extra blanket and the slate, stuffed with a weird selection of books, and had told him the Arrows had beaten the Rockets fifty-nine to forty-three in the grapple quarterfinals. He'd laughed then and said, “Tickets twenty creds each, an' I got to watch it for free. This job's done me a favor.”

“How so?” Ricky had asked.

But Minnow had just laughed and tapped his nose with his index finger.

Ricky had puzzled over that and then remembered a couple of nights ago, after Minnow had delivered the evening blast pack and departed, he'd heard the low rumble of some kind of engine. Well, not so much heard it as felt it in his bones. He'd put his hands against the wall and his fingers had tingled, then he'd put his ear hard to the wall and heard a low hum. He'd felt it in his teeth, too.

It was an antigrav drive. He'd felt funny. It was possible they were close to, or maybe even beneath, a grapple arena. It couldn't be the Arrows' home arena because that wasn't allowed in quarterfinals, semis, or finals. They had to be close to the De Barras Stadium, the only independent stadium on the planet. Independent because it was owned by the Trust, not a team. Of course, and the De Barras Stadium was on the edge of the Trust compound.

Yes! Ricky knew where he was now. All he had to do was get out, or get a message out.

The smile that was starting to form died unborn. How was he going to do that?

He so needed to talk to Nan.

“Dead?” Crowder received the news with mixed feelings. He put his plate down on the table and stared at the screen on the wall of the penthouse's small kitchen. Dammit, he wanted Benjamin dead, didn't he? Of course he did. He needed him dead, but Ben had been . . .
Like a son,
kept coming into Crowder's head. Families had disagreements, chose different sides; it didn't make them not care about each other.

He touched his ear, newly grafted and still very tender. Ben could have killed him, but he hadn't.

“What would you like me to do about the Alphabet Gang?” Stefan French asked.

“Release the rest of the payment.”

Stephan nodded. “There's a message from Crossways, from Norton Garrick's office. Someone called Ramona.”

“Mother Ramona?”

“That's the one. Says she has a proposition for you.”

“I'll come down and take the call.”

Briefly Crowder considered removing the damper that isolated his receiving implant, but even though Benjamin was dead, there was still Carlinni to reckon with, and three hundred psi-techs, his former employees, who all had good reason to carry a grudge.

He stood up slowly and stretched the knots out of his back. He put his coffee cup and breakfast plate into the cleaner and headed for his private antigrav shaft in his shirtsleeves, then thought better of it and went to get his jacket from the bedroom closet. He didn't always wear the Trust's uniform, but today he would, whether out of respect for a dead frenemy or to keep up appearances, he wasn't entirely sure. It just felt right.

Stefan nodded to him as he entered the outer office. “The call's on your screen now, sir.”

“Thank you, son.” Son? When had he started to call his secretary son?

Mother Ramona's hologram hovered a few inches above his desk. Her eyes followed his approach.

“Gabrius Crowder. I don't believe we've had the pleasure of a direct link before.”

“Mother Ramona. I've heard a lot about you, and heard from your lawyers, of course.”

There was a delay while the call routed through jump gates, then the screen sprang to life again. “I thought this deserved a face-to-face conversation. Ben Benjamin's dead, though you probably know that already if you were paying the Alphabet Gang.”

“Dead?” Crowder thought he injected just the right amount of surprise into his expression. “I'm sorry to hear that. We may have had our differences, but he was like a son to me before he went rogue.”

Another delay.

“Your idea of family isn't the same as mine. No matter. There's an outstanding situation. Ben's grandmother and his nephew.”

“What about them?” Now Crowder tried wide-eyed innocence, thought it might look too obvious, and went back to keeping his expression neutral.

Delay.

“Let's be straight with each other, Mr. Crowder. Ben was
a friend of mine and I would be remiss in my duties as a friend if I didn't address a situation which I see now is eminently resolvable without any further recriminations. You no longer need the old woman and the boy as leverage. Release them. Get them to sign a confidentiality agreement first, if you like, but let them go.”

“What if I don't have them?”

Delay.

“With your resources I'm sure you could find them. They might even be grateful for your intervention.”

“Quite. I'll consider it. In the meantime, the platinum on Olyanda—”

This time the delay was slightly longer than the transit time accounted for.

“It doesn't work like that. You can't use Ben's family as leverage on me. Sure I'd like to see his last wishes carried out, but I don't have a personal stake in this. You weighed the value of Olyanda's platinum against a whole colony and your own psi-tech team and found the platinum more valuable. Believe me when I say that one old woman and a boy are not worth a single concession on Olyanda. Our security there has beaten off your fleet—”

“Not mine.”

Delay.

“Whatever.” She waved dismissively. “We've repelled everything you've been able to throw at us and set up a planetary defense grid that you'd be foolish to try to breach.”

Crowder shrugged. “You can't blame a person for trying.”

Delay.

“So what about the old woman and the boy?”

“I'll see what I can find out. Maybe they've been taken as hostages by criminals for ransom. I'll look into it, as a favor . . . in memory of Benjamin.”

Delay.

She nodded. “Thank you.”

Crowder let the holo-image fade. “Stefan!” he called.

“Here, sir.” The young man was already hovering in the doorway.

Crowder adjusted his voice accordingly. “What's the latest on Louisa Benjamin's condition?”

“Stable. Still under sedation.”

“Have Pav Danniri report to me. No need to waste resources, we just need to find a way to release the Benjamins without any kind of media fuss. Maybe make it look like I've staged a rescue. No need for any more bloodshed now.”

B
EN HAS NEVER FLOWN THE FOLDS LIKE THIS before.

He's supposed to be unconscious. Is this an anesthetic dream or is he somehow aware? He's always been in control. He's always known the way out, a thin thread of silver light in the ultimate darkness that leads him to where he needs to go. Now it's all up to the machine that has control of
Solar Wind
. An intelligent machine, to be sure, but not a sentient one. It's programmed to preserve life, but ultimately it doesn't care if it fails.

He's come this far. He doesn't want, “Oops, sorry,” carved on his tombstone.

He searches for the line in his mind.

Gods! It's always been so easy before.

Inside his head is a fog, thick, black, and tarry, but . . . there's a pull that favors one direction above all others. If not a line, then at least a faint trail where the fog rolls back to reveal a glimmer.

In his dream he touches the nav plates, one hand is swollen like an overripe plum about to burst, but he can just about move his fingers.

“May I suggest—” the ship says.

“No. We go this way.”

“But—”

“This way, damn you. Go offline. Taking manual control.”

Ben's wrist throbs. His head begins to pound, but still he follows the pull. He starts to cough again. He tastes blood—iron and salt.

The exit point. There!

Spinning. Out of control. As the ship tumbles into realspace the anesthetic kicks in and the blackness takes him.

“Cara!” Max burst into Wenna's office. “Cara! It's Ben. I . . . I'm sure he's out there.
Solar Wind
. I . . . I can sense her, out there.”

Gen was close behind him. “Don't get your hopes up. Max is still a beginner, but it's worth checking. Even if it is the
Solar Wind
 . . .”

“I know. It may just be wreckage, but . . .” Max said.

Cara reached out to contact Ben. Nothing. Was he dead? Did she really have so little faith?

Wenna was already on the vox to Crossways' traffic control. She looked up, face pale. “They've got an incoming object on the extreme edge of scanner range. Unidentified, not answering hails. It's on a direct trajectory with the station, so if there's no response by the time it reaches the 1000 klick mark they'll launch a missile to deflect it.”

Cara was on her feet in an instant. “Get Garrick to call them off. If it's
Solar Wind
we'll do an intercept. Hell, even if it's not
Solar Wind
we'll do an intercept.”

Wenna hit the vox and Cara reached out for Yan Gwenn, bringing him up to speed in an instant, mind-to-mind.

*The Dixie's ready,*
Yan said.
*She's in Port 22.*

*On my way.*

*Not without me,*
Ronan said.
*There may be someone incapacitated on that boat.*

Ben. Let it be Ben. Oh, please let it be Ben.

*We need a second pilot,*
Yan said.

*I'll come,*
Gen said.

“Just a minute, is this dangerous?” Max grabbed her by the arm.

She shook him off. “Don't treat me like I'm made of
glass just because I'm carrying your child. You said yourself it could be Ben.”

“And it could be dangerous.” Cara glanced down at Gen's twenty-week bump. “More importantly, it could need an EVA and suits aren't made for two.”

Gen growled in frustration and Max swept her up and held her tight. “Do you need me?” he asked over her shoulder.

Cara shook her head. “We've got accurate coordinates and not enough crew space. We can't take more than four and we need someone to fly
Solar Wind
home—if it is
Solar Wind
and if she's in one piece.”

*Let me,*
Kitty Keely chimed in.

*Yan?*
Cara checked.

*She's good.*

*Okay, Kitty. You're in.*

Cara raced for the entrance and grabbed the nearest tub with Ronan and Kitty close behind. The ten-minute journey to the dock seemed interminable. Cara stared at Kitty, wondering if she exhibited the same puffy red eyes. What was her dead friend's name? Oh, yes.

“Sorry to hear about Wes, Kitty. I understand you and he were—”

Kitty nodded. “Just friends, at least that's all we'd got around to. It might have been more, given time. He was very sweet. Volunteered at a community farm.”

“Farm?”

“Surprised me, too. Station kids can go there to pet baby animals. I . . . I've volunteered in his place.” She shrugged. “Yeah, I know, not like me at all, is it?” She dropped her eyes to her hands, splayed over her knees. “I just felt as though I should . . . that he might have liked it.”

“Doing the things now that we should have willingly done when they were alive is like plugging a hole after the water's drained.”

“Oh, you too?”

Cara nodded. “'Fraid so.”

Kitty cleared her throat. “I hope Ben's alive, but . . . one way or the other . . . I hope it's him out there.”

“Thanks.”

The tub rattled to a halt and Kitty leaped out and
through the open doors of Port 22 with a brief wave to Mother Ramona's guard—twice as many of them as there had been previously—beating Cara to the dock by half a stride.

Yan was already powering up Ben's Dixie Flyer and filing an emergency flight plan.

*Crossways Control, do we have clearance?*
Cara asked as they settled into the Dixie and clipped the harnesses. Yan and Cara in the pilot and copilot seats, Kitty and Ronan in the bucket seats behind.

*Clear to go. All other traffic's on lockdown,*
Mother Ramona answered through her Telepath, Ully.

Kitty dogged the hatch as Yan primed the drive. The air lock cycled and the outer jaws opened.

*I'm here in flight control,*
Mother Ramona said.
*Ask for whatever you need, it's yours.*

*Thanks.*
Mother Ramona couldn't fail to be aware of the wave of gratitude Cara emitted.

*That's all right,*
she said.
*If that's Ben in there, bring him home.*

*Will do.*
Or die trying, Cara thought.

Under Yan's competent handling the Dixie rose on antigravs and shot out of the air lock into space.

They had to take turns suiting up because of restricted space in a cabin ideally meant to accommodate only two, but by the time the unidentified ship was in visual range they were all ready.

“Oh, shit!” Yan said from the pilot's seat.

“What's the matter? Is it
Solar Wind
?” Cara had a lump in her throat big enough to choke on.

“Yes, it is.”

She didn't know whether to be relieved or terrified. It was
Solar Wind
, but she still couldn't raise Ben. She'd been maintaining a search for his mental presence all this time.

“But she's spinning end over end,” Yan said. “Ass over tip, and there's some yaw in there as well. We can match velocity, but to lock on we'll have to match her spin as well.”

“Can we do it?” Ronan asked.

“No,” Kitty said.

“Yes,” Yan said.

“We've got to.” Cara gripped the arms of her couch.

*Crossways Control,*
Cara broadcast.
*It is the
Solar Wind
. Repeat it is the
Solar Wind
. Hold your missiles.*

*Copy that,*
Mother Ramona said.
*I'm standing over my guys. You'll have all the time we can give you, but I can't risk a collision with the station.*

*Understood.*

“What next?” Cara asked Yan.

“She's doing one full rotation every thirty-four seconds, left wing down. If we match velocity and come at her from above we can glom onto the upper hull plating toward the tail with a mag lock and use the Dixie's thrusters to try and slow the spin. Just a few degrees in any direction will deflect her away from a direct hit on Crossways and buy us some time.”

Cara relayed that to Crossways Control.

*Is that the best you can come up with?*
Mother Ramona asked.

Cara looked around the cabin, Yan nodded and a second or two later, Kitty agreed. Ronan shrugged. “If Yan says so, it's all right by me.”

*It's the best we can hope for,*
Cara told Mother Ramona.

*Then I'm going to say a very loud prayer on your behalf.*

*Thanks. I think.*

Cara relinquished her place on the copilot's couch to make way for Kitty, who would be much more useful at the controls. She settled into the bucket seat beside Ronan.

“Do you think—” she began.

“I'm trying not to think,” Ronan said. “If I think, I'll pee in this beautifully clean space suit, and I'm not plumbed in.”

“Helmets,” Yan said. “I'll get her as close to the access hatch as I can, but this isn't an exact science. Strap in if you haven't already. It's going to be a bumpy ride.”

Cara pulled on the helm and locked it down tight, suddenly feeling very alone. Her HUD showed the suit was functioning normally and she tried to breathe evenly.

“Check audio,” Yan said.

“Check.”

“Check.”

“Check,” they all responded.

“Here we go.”

The Dixie was flying straight and level on the same trajectory as the freewheeling
Solar Wind
. In space terms they were kissing close, but that still meant they had a kilometer between them. Yan gradually closed the distance. Nine hundred meters, eight hundred.

Kitty called the numbers, but kept her hands away from the controls. At four hundred meters her fingers twitched.

“Not yet,” Yan said.

Three hundred.

Two hundred.

One hundred.

Yan let the Dixie drop back just behind the
Solar Wind
's tail, watching the tail come up beneath them, flip over the top and then see the belly fall away, followed by the nose, repeating the pattern.

From this angle she looked like a diving dolphin, or maybe a humpback whale.

“On the next rotation, Kitty,” Yan said. “Get ready to match thrust. Left wing down.”

“Ready.” Kitty took the thruster control.

“Hold tight.”

As the
Solar Wind
's nose dipped and the tail started to come up, Kitty hit the aft thrusters and Yan hit the short-burn maneuvering ones. The Dixie dived after the
Solar Wind
, belly to back.

Cara felt rather than heard the scrape of ceramic on metal, and a shielding plate bounced off the forward screen. A judder strong enough to rattle her teeth all but shook her out of her seat, saved only by her harness. Then they were tumbling end over end with
Solar Wind
.

“Kitty, hit forward thrusters.” Yan ran his hands over the controls in a complex dance until the speed of their tumble slowed and evened out. “Course correct.”

“Done.” Kitty's voice sounded strange over the suit comms and Cara realized she was holding in hysterical laughter.

*All right, Kitty?*
Cara asked.

*I am now.*

“We're a bit further aft than I'd hoped,” Yan said. “You've got a bit of a trek to the emergency hatch.”

“Not a problem,” Cara said, already on her feet. “I've got clamps. I'll string a line to the hatch.”

The Dixie's air lock was so small that it would only take one fully suited human at a time, even though two could squeeze in under normal circumstances. Cara secured her line as the air cycled and hefted the magnetic clamps which magically bled weight as she floated free of the Dixie's half gravity. She secured the first clamp to the
Solar Wind
's hull and clipped the line to it, then the second, and the third until she worked her way toward the emergency hatch. By this time Kitty and Ronan were close behind her. They'd have to go through this hatch one at a time, too, and though she wanted to push in front, it made sense to send the pilot in first and the medic in second.

As it turned out it was Ronan who pushed in front and dropped feet first into the tubular air lock.

Heart thumping, she watched the lock cycle.

*Is he there? Is Ben there?*

*He is.*

Kitty relinquished her place to Cara as the air lock cycled again.

*Is he . . . ?*

*Alive. Just barely.*

Cara's knees gave way as gravity and emotion hit her all at once and she all but fell out of the air lock and scrambled for the companionway to the flight deck.

She unclipped her helmet and let it fall to the floor. “Ben!”

Ronan had unclipped his own helmet and torn off his gloves. He'd stretched Ben out on the deck plating and strapped an oxygen mask to his face. Cara could see the blue tinge to Ben's lips through it, accentuating the gray pallor that had bleached the health out of his brown skin.