Nimbus

by Jacey Bedford

  Ben nodded. “To be expected, I guess.”

  “Some of the colonies are self-sufficient. Those were the ones who were most eager to join the protectorate. The opportunity to buy platinum from Crossways at a fair price was one of the things that made a difference. I hope Olyanda is as rich in platinum as everyone thinks.”

  “It is. Even richer than expected.”

  “Good, because I’ve promised plenty.”

  “Fifty-six colonies. That’s good going.”

  “Fifty-seven. Velleda wasn’t going to join, but the elders changed their mind after we’d left.”

  “What about the colonies that aren’t self-sufficient?”

  “They fall into two categories. Some rely on imports for nonessential goods that they can’t produce themselves. A colony isn’t going to fail because they can’t get hold of chocolate, coffee, and sugar, so I’m not worried about them. I am worried about the ones that can’t grow enough staples to feed their colonists. They are potentially unviable without the goodwill of their neighbors to sell them protein powders and grain. Five or six of the colonies are not in a good position. Three of them are mining operations, with not much of a toehold on the planet they’re inhabiting. They produce high-quality exports, but their land is largely infertile. Two others produce very little except dissatisfied settlers. I’d like to persuade them to resettle and combine with another colony. They’re not so populous that we couldn’t move them.”

  “What about Guggenheim, Nan?” Ricky asked.

  “Ah, yes, Guggenheim. It’s a dead-end sort of place, but their youngsters are tough as nails and often eager to sign up for military service so they can get off-planet.”

  “It’s not foot soldiers we need, it’s pilots and ships,” Ben said. “Crossways Protectorate would be hard-pressed to respond if there was a major incident. We need to be ready. What defensive capabilities do the colonies themselves have?”

  “It varies. Some of them have navies of their own and are willing to send ships to a combined fleet. Others have nothing. The major problem is that if we want their ships elsewhere, they are reliant on the jump gate system which means the megacorps can use the jump gates as a choke point.”

  “So they need to know how to build Dido Kennedy’s jump drives and they need plenty of platinum rods.”

  “That’s what I’ve promised them.”

  “Then we’d better talk to Garrick about making good on your promise.”

  “There’s one more thing,” Nan said. “I’m not even sure it’s significant, but in talking to the colonies I have noticed a worrying trend. There have been enough mentions of ships going missing in the Folds to begin to ring alarm bells. Each colony on its own may only have one or two incidents to report, but added together, there’s something wrong somewhere. It may not be the Folds, of course. It may be human predators. Ships belonging to the independents are a soft target, or at least they were. Hopefully, the Crossways Protectorate will change that.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  AMARELO

  “MR. CROWDER, THERE’S A REPORT ON YOUR desk that I think you will want to see first thing.” Stefan French met him at the office door with a coffee.

  “Thanks, Stefan. Report?”

  “From Lawrence Archer on Chenon, sir.”

  Archer was his hands-on man in Colony Ops, a competent administrator, but he didn’t have much vision. Crowder had enjoyed the complexities of organization when he’d been in charge. Now he’d worked his way up the Trust ladder, he had to do it all via underlings.

  He lowered himself into his float chair and plugged in the datacrystal. The holo-screen shimmered in front of him. He almost lost his breakfast. The video looked like a slaughterhouse. It was a few moments before his ears caught up with the voice track.

  “. . . images from New Canada received late last night. The colony log shows that a ship claiming to be a humanitarian transport requested permission to land. The colonists billeted refugees with volunteers in the town. The carnage began shortly after midnight. The civilian population was completely unprepared. Resistance formed around the town hall. The adults sent children into the bunker beneath the building for safety. They survived, but their accounts are confused and confusing. The perpetrators didn’t appear to want anything except mindless killing.”

  Crowder put it on pause and rubbed his hand across his eyes, then hit play again.

  “By the time the Monitor relief ships arrived, the perpetrators had departed.”

  Stefan cleared his throat. “There’s been a similar attack on an Alphacorp colony. We don’t have any details yet.”

  “Do you know where?”

  “Perseus Arm, not even in the same sector as New Canada. Speculation suggests that Crossways is behind both raids in retribution for the attack on the station last year.”

  Crowder shook his head. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Several media channels are speculating.”

  Crowder would always be happy to let the media do his dirty work for him, but he knew this wasn’t Ben Benjamin’s style. Besides, the man had been the one to set up the colony on New Canada on behalf of the Trust. He had friends there. If he was going to attack anywhere, it wouldn’t be New Canada.

  *Can you come to the office?*

  Cara connected with Ben while he was in the training gym where he’d stopped off to see Ada Levenson’s session. Despite her reluctance to get involved, Ada put down her opponent in less than thirty seconds and then gave a demonstration of throwing techniques with kitchen cleavers. Not a woman to get on the wrong side of.

  *Something wrong?* Ben asked.

  *I’ve been monitoring the S-logs and psi-net chatter . . .*

  *And?*

  *Two colonies have gone dark. One belongs to the Trust and one to Alphacorp. There’s speculation that it might be us. Retaliation.*

  *They don’t even know what happened, yet they’re blaming us?*

  *They do know what happened—at least they believe they do. They were both small colonies, both recorded taking in a boatload of refugees, then nothing. The Trust planet was New Canada.*

  There was a silence while Ben digested the information. He’d spent almost a year on New Canada working with the colonists on a virgin planet. He’d made friends.

  *What happened? They didn’t find platinum, did they?*

  *No. Nothing like that. The Monitors sent ships in. There were only a few survivors.*

  “Dead? How?” Ben had reached the office where Cara was waiting.

  “Slaughtered,” Cara said. “Messily. A variety of ways: handguns, knives, sidearms, small automatic weapons fire. It looked like a gang of maniacs had gone through the place with a kill order.”

  “They were good people on New Canada: farmers, teachers, scientists, artisans, laborers, administrators, technicians. When we left, they’d hired a crew in from the Trust on long-term contracts: Telepaths, Psi-Mechs, and a couple of Finders.”

  “The psi-techs were killed, too.”

  “And the Trust thinks it was us?”

  “There’s no obvious motive. Nothing stolen.”

  “The survivors?”

  “In their statements they said the refugees, who’d been billeted around the town and the surrounding small settlements, turned on them in the middle of the night. Like unstoppable soldiers, they said, even the ones who looked frail and elderly.”

  “Could it be their attackers simply had the element of surprise? Sounds like a pirate tactic to me. Let me know if you hear anything else. We should warn the Protectorate planets.”

  Cara went with Ben and Nan to the Mansion House.

  Norton Garrick was in a charming mood today.

  “Miss Benjamin, nice to have you with us again. We’ve been following your many successes with interest.” Garrick shook Nan’s hand.

  Cara
noticed how Nan shook hands then fixed her face into a neutral half smile. Was she picking up something odd from Garrick? With her Empathy dialed up to ten, Cara thought she detected what had impacted Nan’s calm. Garrick was hiding it well, but beneath his geniality there was something going on. Agitation? Stress, perhaps?

  Garrick led the way to one of the Mansion House’s smaller reception rooms. This was the place of complex deals and mutual, if unwritten, understandings.

  Mother Ramona, already seated at the dark polished wood table, gestured to the chairs and they all sat—herself, Ben, Nan, and Garrick. There were two seats to spare.

  “I hope you don’t mind. I invited Oleg Staple and Leah Nolan to join us,” Garrick said.

  The door opened again and a stocky man entered, his hair shaved down to almost nothing, which emphasized the roundness of his head. Staple was a handspan shorter than Ben, but he had a powerful frame and shook hands with a viselike grip. He commanded the fleet that protected the planet and now, by default, the Crossways fleet, too. He’d taken the two fleets after the battle and made one good one from the pieces of both.

  Nolan was a few paces behind. She was a woman of middle years, middle height, and middle coloring. It was the first time Cara had met her face-to-face, but she knew from handling comms to and from the planet that Nolan was a no-nonsense administrator, given to quick decisions that were logical and thoughtful. She was in charge of the mining activities on Olyanda; effectively, she looked after everything on the ground.

  The visitors’ arrival made no difference to Garrick’s mental state. Whatever he was feeling had nothing to do with today’s meeting.

  Nan presented the results of her mission on a datacrystal which detailed each colony, its strengths and weaknesses, its exports and imports, its population, its status with regard to self-sufficiency, and the number of ships it could field for its own defense, as well as the number it could contribute to the Protectorate should the need arise.

  Nolan took it all in without making notes. Staple said little but jotted down numbers as the meeting progressed. Mother Ramona, all business today in a sober suit, wrote notes on a desk pad.

  “I must admit,” Garrick said. “Your success has been beyond my wildest hopes.” He smiled at Nan somewhat ruefully. “Fifty-seven colonies joining the Protectorate is almost embarrassing—”

  “Especially since you can’t protect them.”

  Cara tried not to smile at Nan’s directness, but probably failed. She pressed her lips together. Was Nan poking at Garrick deliberately to see if she could stir up something?

  “But they can protect each other,” Nan said. “Isn’t that right, Commander Staple?”

  “The figures certainly add up.” Staple regarded his notes. “With the addition of a few heavy-hitting battleships, we can make a fleet like that work. They’ll need retrofitted jump drives, of course . . .” He stared at his figures. “And we’d need to instigate training and set up a chain of command.” He tapped his stylus on his pad twice. “But I think we can make it work.”

  “We might be able to do something about the heavy-hitting battleships,” Ben said. “When we stranded the enemy fleet in Amarelo space, Eastin-Heigle abandoned their ships so that they could repatriate their crews. It may be a specialist job to break in safely, but theoretically those ships are subject to the laws of salvage. If we can get them, they’re ours. We’d have to check what’s out there, but I guess there might be at least five usable ships.”

  “You’re suggesting we steal Eastin-Heigle’s battleships?” Garrick asked.

  “Not steal,” Ben said. “Salvage. Legally.”

  “If these ships are accessible, why didn’t the other megacorps salvage them?”

  “The ships are useless unless someone can retrofit a jump drive or is willing to take them home the long way through realspace,” Ben said. “We can fit jump drives.”

  “And how are we going to find crews?” Garrick turned to Cara.

  “When Sanctuary is in business, they’ll find us . . . eventually.”

  “Is that wise?” Garrick asked. “How can we tell they’ll be loyal?”

  “It’s almost impossible to lie mind-to-mind,” Cara said. “Especially to a good Empath. It’s not foolproof, obviously. Someone can be absolutely sincere one day, then change their mind the next, but we’d spread the new recruits among seasoned loyal crews. It’s worth a try.”

  “So . . .” Garrick rubbed his hands together. “All we need to do to make this work is to steal—sorry—salvage five enemy battleships, refit them with jump drives, find pilots, and teach the colonies how to retrofit jump drives to their existing fleet.”

  “That’s about it,” Ben said.

  The platinum profits would finance a new retrofitted fleet made up of colony volunteers and salvaged battleships, while Cara and Jussaro tried to set up Sanctuary on Olyanda.

  Nan waited until they were well away from the Mansion House. “How long has Garrick been like that?” she asked.

  “You noticed it, too?” Cara said.

  “He’s a troubled man, desperately trying to do what he feels he has to do before he breaks apart. He thinks he’s living on borrowed time.”

  Cara stole a glance at Ben. It wasn’t news to him.

  “Let me tell you about the Nimbus, Nan . . .” he said.

  Solar Wind emerged from foldspace ten thousand klicks from Crossways’ previous position in Amarelo space, allowing for orbital drift around the star. Ben thanked providence for an uninterrupted flight through the Folds.

  Cara had taken Archie Tatum and a team of Psi-Mech engineers to Olyanda to assess the old landing site, so Lynda Munene had taken her place. A competent class two Telepath, she could handle comms well enough for the current job, but Ben missed Cara.

  He’d sent Nan and Ricky home to Jamundi with Jake, promising to visit as soon as he could.

  After a year, the debris field from the battle was widely dispersed, already orbiting Amarelo on a predictable path.

  “Engineering A-okay,” Dobson checked in.

  “Medical, A-okay,” Ronan said over the comm. “Not that you’re likely to find anyone still alive unless there’s an occasional cryo pod that everyone missed after the cleanup.”

  “Oh, damn!” Yan said. “There’s something out there with an active gravity generator.”

  A significant amount of wreckage drifted as a large mass.

  “Scanners,” Ben said.

  “Scanning now. There it is.” Yan flicked the image, much magnified, to the forward screen.

  “It’s the farm,” Ben said, “Or what’s left of it.”

  Crossways’ farm, a segment of a repurposed O’Neill cylinder, had been one of the first casualties of the battle. How many had died sucking on vacuum when the farm had been ripped apart from the station?

  The remains of the farm had attracted a significant amount of debris over the past year. From this distance, some of the pieces were big enough to be whole ships, abandoned deliberately, or gutted and dead.

  “Let’s see what the megacorps left behind,” Ben said. “I know we’re here for ships, but we’ll not leave pods behind whether their occupants are alive or dead.”

  “Scanning for escape pods now,” Yan said. “You never know . . .”

  Ben nosed Solar Wind into the outer layer of debris. Though dense in space terms, they could still navigate safely without colliding.

  “Pod,” Yan said, and relayed the coordinates. “No life signs.”

  “Ours or theirs?” Ben asked.

  “Theirs.”

  “Let’s be sure. Dobson, deploy the grapple.”

  “I’m on it, Boss.”

  Ben maneuvered the Solar Wind until they were alongside the escape pod. Dobson brought it on board with no trouble at all.

  “Body,” Ronan relayed from the hold.
“One of theirs. Lieutenant Charles Strachan. Alphacorp. Looks like he died of his wounds before the cryo kicked in.”

  “We’ll take him back for funeral rites and notify Alphacorp,” Ben said. “They did the same for ours in the aftermath.”

  They nudged farther toward the center of the gravity well.

  “Ship ahead,” Yan said. “Cruiser size. No ID yet. It’s not broadcasting any kind of beacon, but it looks—uh-oh.”

  “What’s wrong?” Ben asked.

  Yan magnified the image on screen. The ship looked whole until they passed beneath it. The far side had burst open like an overripe plum.

  “There might be salvageable parts,” Yan said. “Dido said not to miss anything potentially valuable.”

  “She should have come herself, then.”

  “You know what she’s like in space.”

  “She lives on a space station.”

  “Yes, but she can convince herself that it’s big and solid. Not at all like knowing there’s only a thin skin between you and a vacuum.”

  “Mark the wreck as worth investigating later and we’ll send in a scavenger crew, but right now we only have time for whole ships.”

  Ben was already moving toward a second set of coordinates.

  Ronan emerged onto the bridge.

  “Deja vu.”

  Ben shrugged. He’d come here in the aftermath of the battle, not once but three times, searching for survivors. It had been a tricky operation, since the enemy fleet was regrouping and the Monitor battlewagons were still looming.

  “Grim days,” Ronan said. “Even when we found them, we couldn’t always keep them alive.”

  “You took some of them personally,” Ben said.

  “Well, I like to keep my reputation intact.”

  “You like to win.”

  “We’re not dissimilar in that respect.”

  Ben felt a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. There was a reason he and Ronan got on so well.

  “We won more than we lost,” Ben said.