Nimbus

by Jacey Bedford

  Rave reviews for Jacey Bedford’s Psi-Tech novels:

  “A well-defined and intriguing tale set in the not-too-distant future. . . . Everything is undeniably creative and colorful, from the technology to foreign planets to the human (and humanoid) characters. Author Bedford’s worldbuilding feels very complete and believable, with excellent descriptions bringing it all to life.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “Bedford mixes romance and intrigue in this promising debut, which opens the Psi-Tech space opera series. . . . Readers who crave high adventure and tense plots will enjoy this voyage into the future.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A nostalgic space opera. . . . Bedford’s prose is brisk and carries the reader quite sufficiently along.”

  —Tor.com

  “I’m very, very excited to see where this series goes next. The foundation that Bedford has laid has so much potential and promise. This is an author I will watch”

  —Bookworm Blues

  “Space opera isn’t dead; instead, delightfully, it has grown up. . . . A fine example of a novel which has its roots in the subgenre but grows beyond it.”

  —Jaine Fenn, author of Principles of Angels

  “The first of a new space opera series that delivers the goods and holds lots of promise of things to come.”

  —SF Signal at kirkus.com

  “Bedford packs a high-interest punch into each paragraph. Characters, plot and technology, plus way-out-there stuff: Crossways has it all.”

  —Kings River Life Magazine

  DAW Books proudly presents the novels of Jacey Bedford:

  The Psi-Tech Novels

  EMPIRE OF DUST

  CROSSWAYS

  NIMBUS

  Rowankind

  WINTERWOOD

  SILVERWOLF

  Copyright © 2017 by Jacey Bedford

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art by Stephan Martiniere.

  Cover design by G-Force Design.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1772.

  Published by DAW Books, Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Nearly all the designs and trade names in this book are registered trademarks. All that are still in commercial use are protected by United States and international trademark law.

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise for Jacey Bedford’s Psi-Tech novels

  Also by Jacey Bedford

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One: SWITCH

  Chapter Two: SEARCH

  Chapter Three: TRAVEL

  Chapter Four: DOUNREAY

  Chapter Five: LIFERS

  Chapter Six: NIGHTMARES

  Chapter Seven: CROWDER

  Chapter Eight: SIEGE

  Chapter Nine: LEAVING

  Chapter Ten: OSSIO

  Chapter Eleven: HOMECOMING

  Chapter Twelve: TOGETHER

  Chapter Thirteen: VISIT

  Chapter Fourteen: CELEBRATE

  Chapter Fifteen: ROXBURGH

  Chapter Sixteen: AUCTION

  Chapter Seventeen: EFRA

  Chapter Eighteen: DREAMS

  Chapter Nineteen: GATE

  Chapter Twenty: ESCAPEE

  Chapter Twenty-One: MONSTER

  Chapter Twenty-Two: SMACKDOWN

  Chapter Twenty-Three: AFTERMATH

  Chapter Twenty-Four: ULLY

  Chapter Twenty-Five: COLONIES

  Chapter Twenty-Six: AMARELO

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: OLYANDA

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: THIEF

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: SALVAGE

  Chapter Thirty: LOPEZ

  Chapter Thirty-One: BUTTERSTONE

  Chapter Thirty-Two: DNA

  Chapter Thirty-Three: JAMUNDI

  Chapter Thirty-Four: REVENANT

  Chapter Thirty-Five: ATTACK

  Chapter Thirty-Six: AUTOPSIES

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: QUESTIONS

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: PUZZLES

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: KITTY

  Chapter Forty: RESEARCH

  Chapter Forty-One: OLIVIA

  Chapter Forty-Two: EXCHANGE

  Chapter Forty-Three: SANCTUARY

  Chapter Forty-Four: PLANNING

  Chapter Forty-Five: WARNINGS

  Chapter Forty-Six: FAMILY

  Chapter Forty-Seven: HUB

  Chapter Forty-Eight: MEETING

  Chapter Forty-Nine: CHENON

  Chapter Fifty: NORRO

  Chapter Fifty-One: BLOCKADE

  Chapter Fifty-Two: MKHULU

  Chapter Fifty-Three: AMBUSH

  Chapter Fifty-Four: BOARD

  Chapter Fifty-Five: GLASS

  Chapter Fifty-Six: NIMBUS

  Chapter Fifty-Seven: AFTERWORD

  Acknowledgments

  When you pick up a book from a shelf and look inside, you are not simply seeing the work of an author, but that of a team. I would especially like to thank all at DAW: my lovely (Hugo-winning) editor, Sheila Gilbert, Josh Starr and all the publication staff, copyeditor, proofreader, and publicists. I’d also like to thank Stephan Martiniere for another great cover. Thanks also to my (then) agent Amy Boggs and to my new agent Don Maass, and all at Donald Maass Literary Agency, for enthusiasm, expertise and guidance.

  I am especially grateful to my beta readers, those who dismember my manuscripts to find all my mistakes, especially Jaine Fenn for critiques above and beyond. I am also indebted to writers in the Northwrite SF writers’ group: John Moran, Terry Jackman, Gus Smith, Liz Sourbutt, Tina Anghelatos, Tony Ballantyne, C. J. Jessop, Sue Oke, and Kari Sperring (without whom this book, and others, might never have happened).

  In addition I’d like to thank those not already thanked who attended Milford and wrestled with my first and last chapters in 2015 and 2016: Ben Jeapes, Liz Williams, Dave Clements, David Turnbull, Val Nolan, Jackie Hatton, Tiffani Angus, Chris Butler, Matt Colborn, Heather Lindsley, Dave Gullen, David Allan, Guy T. Martland, Jim Anderson, Glen Mehn, Elizabeth Counihan, Lizzy Priest, Sue Thomason, Amy Tibbetts, Pauline Morgan and Siobhan McVeigh.

  Thanks also to my bandmate in Artisan and regular cinebuddy, Hilary Spencer, who turns seek-the-typo into a game, and attacks my manuscripts mercilessly with a metaphorical red pen.

  An extra-special thank you and much love to my husband, Brian, offspring, Ghillan and Joe, and my mum, Joan Lockyer, for tolerating my obsessive, post-midnight keyboard pounding and other writerly foibles.

  And lastly, thanks to you for buying, reading, talking about, reviewing and recommending not just my books, but all books. Without readers there would be no writers. You rock! Keep turning the pages.

  Jacey Bedford

  Yorkshire, June 2017


  www.jaceybedford.co.uk

  Chapter One

  SWITCH

  IF THIS WAS WINNING, CARA CARLINNI WAS sure as hell glad they hadn’t lost. It had been a tough year since the combined fleets of five megacorporations had tried to pound Crossways into submission.

  Tried and failed.

  Cara threaded her way through what had been a piazza, if that didn’t sound too pretentious on a space station. It was an area wide enough for an assortment of shops, booths, and pavement cafes. Enterprising merchants had cleared away enough rubble to set up their stalls again within a few days of the bombardment, and since there were other, more urgent repairs, they’d been allowed to get on with it. They’d reused the rubble, incorporated it into new walls or carted it off, bucket by bucket, to be disposed of—probably illegally—via an airlock, overseen by someone’s uncle’s third cousin with a blind eye suitable for turning.

  She came here most days, ostensibly to get her coffee fix, but largely to take the temperature of the feelings on the station. Empathy cranked up to eleven, she wandered between the stalls, chatting with some vendors, nodding politely to others. She gave the impression of being relaxed, but she glanced left and right, cataloging the faces, noting anything out of place in the organized chaos.

  The wounded space station spun in high orbit above Olyanda, a planet with significant deposits of precious platinum, vital for the jump gate system. A platinum bonanza was both a blessing and a curse—a blessing only if you could hold on to it.

  Sadly, all the platinum in the galaxy couldn’t bring back the dead. They might never know how many they’d lost. A station like Crossways didn’t keep tabs on its inhabitants.

  Whether you called Crossways a free port or a rogue depended on which side of the corporate fence you stood on. Cara might once have called it rogue, but she’d crossed that line when the good guys proved to be anything but and Crossways’ criminal community—most of them, anyway—turned out to be not so bad once you got to know them.

  She stood in line at Java Joe’s. The woman in front of her had thinning gray hair. There was the ridge of a scar running diagonally across her scalp, leaving an odd spiky tuft sticking up at an angle. The woman ran her fingers over her head, combing the tuft back into place. It lasted about five seconds and then, strand by strand, sprang to attention again. Cara was suddenly curious to run her fingers through her own short locks to see if there was anything out of place. No, she’d combed it this morning; it was fine.

  Joe wasn’t the fastest barista on station, but he gave each customer his full attention, served great coffee from his little handcart, and picked up the best gossip. The thin-haired woman took her cup and wandered away, leaving Cara at the front of the line.

  “Hey, headspace lady.” Joe grinned at her. “How are you doing this morning?” He’d quickly worked out that she was a Telepath. The Free Company flash on her buddysuit identified her as a psi-tech of one sort or another, but she could have been a Finder or a Navigator or even a Psi-Mech.

  “Hey, Joe. Usual please.”

  “Coming right up.” He hit the grinder, filled the filter basket, and tamped the coffee grounds. While the water jetted through, he half-turned his head. “You tell all the Free Company to come here for their morning coffee. I could do with the business.”

  Cara glanced round. “It looks busy enough.”

  “Yeah, now it is, but Captain Syke put a temporary curfew on us. Close at nine sharp and don’t open again until seven the following morning. I used to stay open until midnight for the shift change workers.”

  “Curfew? Has there been trouble?”

  “A few locals getting excited. You know how it is.”

  “I know.”

  There were still tensions, of course. Nearly fourteen months after the battle, and some sections of Crossways were still sealed off, leaking air like an old sieve. Fifty thousand displaced inhabitants from the station’s rim had migrated toward the illusion of safety at the central core, crowding the established residents. Tempers flared and trouble erupted on a regular basis.

  “I think you should go and look at Flash Harry’s stall. There’s something there you might be interested in.” Joe took a scan of her handpad in payment and winked at her before he turned to the next customer in line.

  Cara knew where Flash Harry displayed his wares. He was a purveyor of collectibles, or so he said. In practice, that meant he sold items he’d scavenged from the wreckage. One way or another, there was a plethora of abandoned stuff that had once belonged to the dead or the displaced. She suspected he had a stash somewhere, and was gradually filtering it out via this and other stalls he ran.

  Harry saw her coming, but not soon enough to hide the one item that drew her attention. Among a selection of bags was a battered satchel with a recognizable scar where a logo had been. It was a Psi-Mech’s satchel, normally filled with small spider bots used for cutting, drilling, riveting, and welding. All mind-controlled.

  “Where did you get this, Harry?” She opened it and checked. No bots. “And where’s the tech that was inside it?”

  “I swear it’s genuine, Miss Carlinni.”

  “I can see it’s genuine. I know exactly what it is. I want to know how you came by it and, more importantly, what happened to the Psi-Mech who owned it.”

  Harry’s face took on a scrunched-up look that told her he was going to start whining.

  “Or should I call the militia?” she asked.

  “No need for that. One o’ my urchins found it close to where the Saturn Arm sheared when the ring broke away. This side of the big blast doors. No bots in it. Reckon whoever owned it was about his business when whatever happened happened. Know what I mean?”

  She did. They’d lost psi-techs in the bombardment, some accounted for, some not. If they could figure out who this had belonged to, they’d at least know where he—or she—had died.

  “I’ll take it.” She tucked the satchel under her arm. “Anytime you find something you think belongs to the Free Company, you bring it to us. Understand? And don’t hide it away for so long next time, or I’ll ask Captain Syke to find an excuse to search your stash.”

  “Sure, Miss Carlinni.”

  “You won’t be out of pocket.” She flipped a small credit chip over the stall, and Harry caught it with practiced ease. A greasy smile replaced his hangdog expression.

  Sipping her coffee slowly, she passed the antigrav tube and made her way to a stairwell with medonite walls and foam-metal steps in a mesh pattern that let her see down to the dizzying depths. Antigrav tubes and hot coffee didn’t mix, and she’d forgotten to ask Joe for a lid for the cup. She skipped up three flights of steps, light in the half-gravity, regaining weight when she emerged close to Blue Seven where the Free Company had made their home.

  The duty guard waved Cara through with a nod and a smile.

  She walked along the dimly lit barbican, hearing the doors at one end lock behind her before the doors at the other end opened.

  She headed straight for the main office where Morwenna Phipps worked her organizational magic. Wenna professed she could run the place with one hand tied behind her back, which was probably just as well since she’d lost her right arm above the elbow several years before, when pirates raided Hera-3. The prosthetic was good, but she still complained that they hadn’t got the nerve grafts right.

  Cara put the satchel on Wenna’s desk. “Found by the blast doors near the Saturn Arm,” she said.

  Wenna reached out and then drew her hand away without touching. “Max might be able to tell us who it belonged to.”

  “Is he in yet?”

  “I’m not sure he ever goes home. It must be lonely without Gen and the baby.”

  “The station’s over the worst. Surely, it’s time for them to come back. Ben could collect them if they couldn’t hitch a ride on a shuttle. I’m sure he wouldn
’t mind. A trip to Olyanda would be as good as a holiday. It would get him away from Garrick for a while. He’s been working sixteen hours a day for the last—”

  “Are you talking about me again?”

  “Ben!” Cara spun to face him, feeling a flush of pleasure. “Only saying what anyone with half an eye can see. You’ve been working too hard. I didn’t even hear you get up this morning. What time did you leave?”

  He shrugged. “I was awake, so—” He noticed the satchel. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Cara repeated the story about finding it on Flash Harry’s stall in the bazaar.

  “Kinan Odell would be the best one to ask,” Ben said. “Max is a better Finder, but Odell knows the crew better.”

  Cara sent out a narrow strand of thought and mentally located Odell working in the equipment repair room. She invited him to take a break and join them. He was at the door in less than five minutes, wearing a greasy coverall and pushing his ginger hair out of his eyes with oil-stained fingers.

  “You wanted me?” he asked.

  “We wondered if you could identify who this belonged to,” Cara said.

  “Where was it . . . ?”

  “Near the blast doors by the Saturn Arm. It was on Flash Harry’s stall this morning.”

  “Damn. I searched that area myself. Did I miss something?” Odell reached out and took the satchel.

  “You were looking for people, not equipment,” Ben said. “Whoever this belonged to was probably long gone, but at least we’ll know who it was and where they died.”

  “I can probably figure it out if no one’s been using it in the meantime.” Odell closed his eyes. His face took on a dreamy expression.

  Cara cranked up her Empathy to coast along the mental path he took. She could feel his thoughts as he absorbed the—for want of a better word—aura of the satchel.

  “It’s been through a few hands.” Odell stroked the fabric of the bag. “Some I don’t recognize. Not all ours, I mean. Maybe whoever found it. There’s a hint of Serafin West, but he’s obviously still with us. The only one I can identify from the missing list is Greg Tilney,” Odell said. “Was he on the wrong side when the Saturn Ring ripped free and opened the Arm to vacuum?”