Crossways (68 page)

*The medical staff on the ground have asked us to keep them up here for a while.*

*Forget that. We need the ark back here—top speed.*

*Okay. We can load them into shuttles in four hours if we have to.*

*Do it. Your shakedown run for the new drive will be straight back here. What about the ark's former crew?*

*Their cryo pods are still on the ark.*

Cara relayed the information to Ben and then got back to Jake.
*Ben says to send the crew cryo pods dirtside and keep them on ice. We'll sort them out later.*

If there is a later, she thought.

The waiting was the worst. Ben sat in the corner of their war room while everyone else buzzed around him.

“You look too calm, are you even awake?” Cara had drunk so many cups of coffee that she was buzzing with caffeine and had gone to pee four times in three hours.

“I'm awake.”

“Want caff?”

He shook his head. “It won't help.”

Three hours into their wait, Oleg Staple confirmed there
was a Trust fleet heading for Olyanda.
*We're ready for them,*
he said.
*But any reinforcements you can send would be very welcome.*

An hour later the ark appeared out of foldspace a short fifty klicks from Crossways with a whoop from Jake.
*Did we make it in time for the fun?*

*In time to get the hell out of here with fifty hornets in your hold,*
Ben said.
*Stand by to load. Take them to Olyanda. Get back for another pickup if you can, but the ark's no warship, so avoid direct confrontation.*

*Understood.*

*And, Jake . . . *

*Yeah?*

*Thanks.*

Garrick deployed all the available ships with firepower, ordered all blast doors on Crossways closed and the viewports shuttered. The drone operators, some of them operating a single drone, others, Psi-Mechs, meshed into a flotilla, settled into their padded chairs in the room directly below the war room and sent a hundred of the drones to the far side of the station, leaving them prepped and ready. Another hundred were stationed twenty klicks above the spindle, with the third hundred thirty klicks below. All nonessential personnel were directed to the inner core of the station and weapons operators to the pulse-cannon and missile launchers. The remaining two hundred drones were ready to spring from their launchers at a moment's notice. The paid crews had once laughed at the spare-time soldiers, but now they were working side by side with no complaints, or at least none that reached the control room.

Garrick's guards, Tengue's mercs, and private forces belonging to the various crimelords manned the docking bays in case of incursion, for now safely behind solid airlocks.

“Enemy fleet standing off at five hundred klicks.” Briggs' voice came over the comm from traffic control next door.

“Incoming comms.” Ully, a small white-haired woman who looked older than Nan, had the comms station.

“Crossways, this is the Monitor Ship
Oxford
: stand down and prepare to be boarded.”

Garrick leaned into the comm. “Not gonna happen. You have no authority here.”

“We have warrants for five hundred individuals believed
to have taken refuge on Crossways and a court order for the reclamation of Alphacorp property, to whit, the station itself.”

“Five hundred individuals? Now you're getting ambitious.”

“Transmitting the list now.”

Ben glanced at it. As expected, his name and Cara's were close to the top, but Norton Garrick and Ramona Delgath were on there as well, together with a number of names he didn't recognize who were obviously notables in Crossways' underworld.

“It's a who's who of the Crossways great and the good,” Mother Ramona said. “Well, maybe the not-so-good, if truth be told.” She smacked the table with the flat of her hand and the holograms swayed. “This is just an excuse. They'll come at us hard whatever we do.”

“Monitor Ship
Oxford
,” Ben said. “You are exceeding your authority. This station is home to almost a million people, most of whom are not on your list. Any attack endangering civilians in the pursuit of criminals is regarded as using unnecessary force. Monitor regulation 19, section 1.” He turned. “Cara, broadcast that for me, please. It may slow them down.”

“Alphacorp has obtained a judgment against Crossways in the Interstellar Supreme Court,” MS
Oxford
transmitted.

“Crossways is a hunk of metal and ceramic, not a person. There are people on Crossways. I repeat: Regulation 19, section 1. Officers in breach of this regulation are subject to suspension and investigation.”

Cara transmitted the same thing again, and added,
*This is already uploaded to the S-LOG, just in case you thought you could shut us up before anyone found out.*

“Stand by and prepare to be boarded.” This time it was another voice on the comm, not the Monitor ship.

“Unknown vessel, identify yourself,” Briggs answered.

“Alphacorp One, vessel 2C049,
Sea Eagle
. You're outgunned, Crossways.”

“Heavy cruiser, armed with pulse-cannon and missiles. Potentially carries five hundred ground troops, and she's just one of at least forty vessels.” Mother Ramona brought up the specs on screen.

“Shit!” Garrick held out his hand to silence Ben. “Go to hell,
Sea Eagle
, and take Alphacorp with you.”

The combined fleet came in fast and hard. The first missile hit the station just five seconds later.

“Level four, green sector, exterior skin breach,” Mother Ramona said. “Automatic sealant repair.”

“Laser array target incoming missiles,” Garrick said. “Pulse-cannon, fire at will as your sights come to bear. Unless the Monitor ships fire on us, don't target them. There may still be some sense in all this. Make every shot count. Drone group one, get around behind the Alphacorp vessels. Hit them where it hurts.”

“Understood.”

Ben jerked upright at the sound of Serafin's voice.
*Serafin. I thought you were still in Dockside Medical.*

*I want to make sure Dockside Medical is still here this time tomorrow. Besides, all I have to do is sit here and fly a few drones. It's hardly going to tax my breathing. Archie's with me, and a few more Free Company volunteers.*

The lasers set up a sweeping barrage that took out a proportion of incoming missiles, but some got through and the Crossways' hologram started to show damage.

“Deploy drone groups four and five,” Garrick said, and two hundred drones launched from the upper ring.

A corvette, two frigates, and two cruisers, all Crossways' jumpships, appeared in realspace behind the enemy fleet. The cruisers dropped thirty hornets between them, took out a destroyer class ship in a pincer movement and disappeared back into the Folds without receiving any damage. The corvette dithered and slipped sideways into foldspace. The two frigates launched a series of missiles at Alphacorp cruisers and winked out of realspace before they hit, but the missiles took out one ship and damaged three others.

“Yes!” Garrick punched the air.

Ben kept his eyes on the screens. Five ships down out of forty was still a hell of a lot of ships left to fight off.

The hornets began to target the drives of the larger ships. They didn't have enough firepower to take down a cruiser or even a frigate individually unless they got lucky, but they could cripple a ship with a hit to the drive. They had less than five minutes to wreak havoc before three Alphacorp cruisers deployed a flotilla of drones, outnumbering them three to one.

All Ben could do was stand by and watch as one by one the hornets were snuffed out. He felt sick. He checked with Port 22, but
Solar Wind
's repairs were still ongoing.

The Monitor battlewagons, at least for now, were standing back and observing, not taking an active part in the offensive. Hopefully he'd set the crews questioning their officers' commands.

The five Crossways jumpships appeared out of nowhere again, targeted a cruiser, destroyed it and vanished, but not before picking up five surviving hornets. The next time, they all popped into being at different points, delivered significant damage and disappeared. One of their targets was left floating dead, another broke up in slow motion. A third was spinning end over end.

It couldn't last. The next time the ships emerged from foldspace the corvette, Esterhazy's ship, collided with an Alphacorp cruiser that was on its immediate flight path. The resulting destruction was instant and complete. Both ships reduced to space junk in the blink of an eye. The debris took out one of the smaller Alphacorp ships while the four remaining Crossways ships melted back into the Folds.

“I should be out there with them,” Ben said.

“In what? The Dixie Flyer?” Cara asked.

With a shimmer, the ark materialized in the middle of the dogfight, very obviously not a fighting ship.

“Hey, whoa!” Lowenbrun broadcast. “I've got thirty thousand innocent settlers in cryo on board. White flag! White flag! Hold your fucking fire!”

The Alphacorp ship on a direct course for the ark broke and rolled away.

“Ark ship, this is Monitor Ship
Oxford
. Identify yourself.”

Jake swung the ark between the station and the array of attacking vessels and the great hold doors swung open, station-side. “Ark J, series 982,
Harvest
,” Jake said. “Ring any bells?”

“Monitor Ship
Supreme
, here,
Harvest
, please report your status, are your settlers safe?”

“Next fifty hornets, go, go, go!” Garrick said.

The hornets deployed and, while Jake was stalling, slipped into the ark's hold in tight formation.

“Oh, yes, MS
Supreme
, safe, no thanks to Ari van Blaiden and a rogue Monitor called Sergei Alexandrov who tried to abandon them in foldspace.”

“Stand by for boarding,
Harvest
. Let's escort you out of the hot zone.”

“No, that's not the way it's going to work,” Jake said. “The settlers are safe where no one can reach them. Thanks for the breathing space, MS
Supreme
.”

By the time the fleet cruisers had woken up to what was happening, Jake was seconds away from closing up the hold on the last hornet. He slid into the Folds from a standing start and the first missile volley hit the space where he wasn't.

“Yes!” Ben breathed again, forgiving Jake Lowenbrun all his former crimes.

A few small successes followed, but the fleet had the edge through sheer weight of numbers. Even with all the drones deployed the station was taking a beating. Enough missiles slipped through their defense to knock chunks out of sections of station. Losses mounted. The hologram hovering above the table in the war room showed all the damage, glowing red. The crescent of the farm took three hits in quick succession, lost integrity and broke away, scattering a trail of ice crystals in its wake from the irrigation systems.

“Losing structural integrity in Gold One,” an anonymous voice announced over the comm. “Evacuate Gold Two through Four. Emergency evacuation procedure. All civilians to your evac stations.” The public address system repeated the instruction three times and then a klaxon took over. Mother Ramona muted it. The station hologram shuddered and Gold One and Two, the tube-like extension that held the observatory, disappeared under fiery red.

“Let me through. Let me through!” Shouting from next door penetrated their war room. “Bastards. Let me fuckin' through. Benjamin, it's me, Dido. Let me fuckin . . .”

As Ben got to the door, Dido Kennedy kicked the legs out from under the guard who'd been blocking her way.

“Thank all the little angels you're not out there.” Kennedy reached and took Ben's hand. “I got it. I did it. I told you it could be done.”

“What?”

“It just needs the right Navigator, or maybe Navigators, and we just need them to stop pounding us for a few minutes.”

“What does? Take a deep breath. You're not making sense.”

“Yeah, I'm making the best sense you'll ever hear. I fitted this whole damn station with a jump drive. Come and see. Red One is gonna be jumpin' tonight.”

T
HE MORE BEN THOUGHT ABOUT IT, THE more he thought it could work. “It's theoretically possible,” he told Garrick, yanking Dido back to make her wait for him. “Kennedy's jump drive worked on the ark.”

“That whole damn farm section was brought here through the Folds,” Dido said. “Granted it didn't arrive in one piece, but it can be done. You've just got to believe me.”

“Belief?” Garrick choked on his own voice.

“Tell him, Benjamin,” Dido said.

Ben shrugged. “That's as near as I can put it into words. Nothing's real in the Folds. Mass has meaning out here, but it ceases to have meaning in there. We'll need to pull all our ships—the ones without jump drives—back to the station before we can jump or we'll leave them behind to be picked off.” He turned to Dido. “You said we needed to get them to stop pounding us.”

She pulled a face. “Yeah. I can't guarantee what'll happen if we try to jump with incoming missiles. We'll suck 'em into the Folds with us. They could pass through, but the station's so big that they could still be lodged deep inside when we emerge and then—kaboom—from the inside out. Could blow us apart.”

“So we have to get them to stop firing. How the hell can we do that?” Garrick asked. “Ask them nicely?”

“We'll surrender,” Mother Ramona said. “But only on our terms. Cease-fire first.”

“They'll want a sign of good faith,” Ben said. “Tell them they can have me.”

“No. No. No!” Dido was almost jumping up and down. “You're driving the bus, Benjamin. I need you down in Red One. Now. Come on!”

“Hold on,” Ben said. “We need to sort this or Crossways isn't going anywhere.”

“They can have me,” Garrick said. “Have you still got the Keely woman in lockup?”

“Yes.”

He tapped the hologram control panel and cut and pasted images of damage across the station until it looked about to disintegrate. “There, does that look credible, or does it need a bit more?” He tapped again and the damage began to look even more dangerous. “Keely's got a direct line to Akiko Yamada, right?”

“Yes, but Yamada's not likely to be with the fleet.”

“That doesn't matter. Yamada will have a link to her admiral. Keely's a Telepath but not an Empath, right?”

“Yes.”

“So she won't be able to read me if I sell her a pack of lies?”

“Not unless you're a really bad liar,” Ben said.

“I'm not. It's all a matter of belief, like you said. You really have to believe your own lies.”

“Remind me never to play poker with you.”

Kitty had felt the thumps and knew what they meant. She wondered whether, if she'd not been isolated in this damping field, Remus would have warned her to get out before the attack began, or whether she was an acceptable loss on this kind of operation. What would happen to her mother if she was killed while on assignment? She'd been thinking a lot about what Cara had said about the consequences of knowing too much. She had little doubt that it was an Alphacorp fleet attacking. As much as the Trust wanted Ben
and Cara, they had no legitimate excuse to attack Crossways. Alphacorp did.

How long could the station take this kind of battering? It was big. No ship was going to take it out with a single missile, but enough battering and something vital would be affected. As she reached that conclusion the lights in her cell flickered. If only the damping field would blow.

The door hummed and whooshed open.

She shot back to the far side of the cell. They may have decided she was more trouble than she was worth.

“Cara. No armed guard?”

Cara shook her head, face pale. “Not this time. Garrick's got a job for you. I hope you've still got your hotline to god.”

“Huh?”

“Akiko Yamada.”

“Yes. I hope so, anyway. Her Telepath usually contacts me.”

Dare she let herself hope there might be a way out?

“Station can't take any more,” Cara said. “Garrick will tell you himself. Are you going to be trouble or will you come quietly?”

“No trouble.”

“Good. Wear this.”

A damping pin. “Is that really necessary?”

Cara shrugged. “Do you want to get out of this cell or not?”

Kitty stuck the pin in her collar and followed Cara to the waiting tub.

“Where are all Tengue's people?” she asked.

“Manning the barricades at the ports.”

“Everyone all right?”

“You mean Syke? So far.”

Kitty felt a rush of relief. Maybe she was clinging on to Syke because he'd been Wes' friend, but for whatever reason she'd grown fond of him.
As a friend,
she reminded herself.

The tub ride seemed to take forever as they had to keep stopping for blast doors to be opened and closed behind them again. Cara wasn't very communicative. She supposed that was fair. At the hub, crowds had gathered, filling all the street spaces and spreading out into the park. Cara led her past two guards at the Mansion House door, the small entrance on the ground floor, not the elegant front door. So she didn't rate the VIP entrance.

“Garrick's not here. We have to go upstairs.” Cara led the way to a small personal elevator, not an antigrav shaft, but a moving box, claustrophobic but fast and smooth. They came out into a flight control room. Norton Garrick waited in the doorway that led into an inner room.

Mother Ramona glared at her and then turned to Garrick. “I'll leave you now. Good luck.” She stepped in close and kissed him. Garrick kissed her back, hard, desperation showing in every line of his body.

When he stepped back from her he looked over to Kitty. “Come in, Miss Keely. We have business to discuss.”

There was a hologram of the station. Kitty gulped involuntarily when she saw the damage. Garrick gestured to it.

“To put it quite bluntly, Miss Keely, we give in, but there are conditions. I want a guarantee of safety for station personnel who are not on the Monitor arrest list. You can take off the damper now. I want you to relay a message to your Ms. Yamada.”

An hour ago Kitty had been worried about being spaced, but now, here she was, effectively taking Crossways' surrender. Would that help to save her from the consequences of knowing too much if Alphacorp got their hands on her again? Would it save her mother from a labor camp?

“I'm not a long-range Telepath, Mr. Garrick. I'll need comms assistance.”

“Ully will connect you.” He indicated a white-haired woman standing quietly by the comms array. She looked fragile, like a dandelion clock, as if a couple of puffs would blow her away, but when Kitty shut off the damping pin, Ully's mental contact felt no older than Kitty herself. She slipstreamed behind the old woman's talent and found Remus.

*I'm here on Crossways with Mr. Garrick. He wishes to negotiate a surrender.*

There was a slight pause.
*You have been absent from our thoughts for some time.*

*Unforeseen circumstances. Can we discuss it later? Crossways is being pounded to a pulp. They've had enough.*

There was a pause.

*Ms. Yamada, asks whether, in your opinion, this is a genuine offer.*

Kitty eyed the hologram.
*The station has taken a lot of
damage. I don't think they have a choice, but there are conditions, safety of station personnel, etc.*

There was another pause while Remus relayed Kitty's message.

*Ms. Yamada says that Mr. Garrick can discuss details with her fleet commander.*

*I think that will be acceptable.*

She asked Garrick and he gave assent.

*I want Garrick here in person,*
Admiral Lloyd said when Kitty had been given clearance to facilitate direct negotiation.
*The only way we're going to talk is face-to-face.*

“Face-to-face,” she said to Garrick. “I'm sorry.”

He took a deep breath, lips pressed together, then nodded. “If that's the only way. Tell him to call off his dogs. I'm not going out there while missiles are flying. I want a cease-fire while I make the transit.”

Kitty relayed the message and then came back with, “He agrees to a cease-fire, but he won't stop firing until you launch. You are to come alone in a small craft. And I'm to confirm that it's you that's in it and to pilot it myself.”

Damn! She was going back to Alphacorp whether she wanted to or not.

“Right,” Garrick said. “Just you and me in a hornet.”

“Not a hornet, sir. An unarmed flyer.”

“A small shuttle.” He paused, then nodded. “There's really no choice, is there? I agree. I'm bringing my ships back in now as a sign of good faith.”

“Shall we go down to your dock?” Kitty stood back and waited for Garrick to lead the way.

Ben stood in Dido's workshop in front of a simple drive plate cobbled together from obsolete parts. Cables as thick as his wrist snaked out from under the console and disappeared down a vent in the floor.

“Well?” Dido asked.

“It's either genius or the worst idea anyone ever had in the history of the universe,” Ben said.

*Will it work?*
Mother Ramona was up in the control room while Garrick made his way down to Port 22 with Kitty Keely.

*One way or another it will finish this thing,*
Ben said.
*If
it doesn't work we'll all be scattered atoms across the whole sector.*

“Mother Ramona wants to know if it will work,” Cara told Dido.

“It'll work as long as the Navigator is strong enough.” Dido narrowed her eyes. “Are you, Benjamin? Strong enough?”

“I stand more of a chance with every available jump-drive Navigator in gestalt.”

“Can you do that?”

He nodded to Cara and she nodded back. “I can't, but Cara can. Unfortunately there are only three of us.”

“Three's better than one,” Cara said. “I'll hold everyone together. Ben can take the focus.”

Ben would have liked the indefatigable Magena sisters as backup, but they were still in the Folds, as were Valois and Singh. Gen arrived, hugely round of belly, followed closely by the Kazans.

“Gen—” Ben began.

“What, you think I can't hack it just because I'm pregnant?”

“Be honest.” Max followed her in.

“Yeah, all right, I might be in labor, but it's really early. Contractions every thirty minutes and hardly pains yet, just tightening.”

“I've sent for Ronan, but he's dealing with casualties,” Max said.

Ben's mind did that kind of backflip that he figured men's minds often did when dealing with childbirth.

“You'll be fine.” Alia put one arm around Gen. “With my first it took twelve hours from this stage until I was cursing the midwife, Grigor, seven gods, and everyone else I'd ever met in my whole life.”

Ben eyed Gen doubtfully, but this jump was likely to be over in the next few minutes, so no use worrying about what might happen twelve hours from now.

“Okay, let's do this thing,” he said. “Kennedy, get the station thruster controls transferred to the remote rig.”

He placed both hands on the panel and Gen and Alia each placed their own hands over his, Gen on his right, Alia on his left.

“Where are you going to take us?” Dido asked.

“Olyanda.”

Cara looked at him sharply.
*Straight out of one battle into another?*

He nodded.
*All our resources together, where we can use them to best effect. I've got an idea for divide and conquer, but first we have to get through the Folds.*