Nimbus

by Jacey Bedford

  Kitty touched her raw knuckles to the glass and let the blood trickle down. “I thought he liked me.”

  “He does. He likes you a lot. He likes you so much that he doesn’t want to see you hurt yourself, or hurt anyone else.” She glanced up at Syke. “Isn’t that so, Arran?”

  Syke dropped to his knees beside Cara. “Yes, that’s it. I don’t want to see you get hurt. I lost you once and you’ve come back. I want to keep you safe.”

  Ronan cleared his throat. “I wondered. I know it’s a big ask, Cara, but I think you might be able to help me to break through to Kitty. You know about deep regression, and you have . . .” He hesitated. “You have unique skills.”

  “You’re not suggesting I crack open her mind, are you?” Cara stiffened. “You know I said I’d never use it like that.”

  Yet she had, when the need arose. Had she enjoyed it, or did it still make her squirm?

  “Not alone,” Ronan said. “We could do it together. I’ll supply the direction. You supply the push.”

  “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “I think I do.”

  “Ronan, if she says no, she means no,” Ben said quietly.

  Cara glanced at Ben. Who was he to say she shouldn’t do it? She took a deep breath. She’d show Ben Benjamin what she could and couldn’t do. “All right, Ronan. What do you want me to do?”

  “Join with me. Follow my lead.”

  She licked her lips and nodded.

  Ronan had a sure mind touch. He was an Empath like her and they’d come through many trials together. He’d been the one who helped her to unlock her own hidden memories when she’d escaped from Ari van Blaiden and Donida McLellan. He was a friend. She’d often wondered whether he could have been more than a friend if it hadn’t been for the fact that he was certifiably gay and settled with his partner, Jon, and, of course, she’d met Ben first. Well, the jury was still out on that relationship.

  Being linked to Ronan amplified her own natural Empathy. She felt Arran Syke’s concern for Kitty rolling off him in waves. And Ben—a shock ran through her—Ben was all concern for her. Maybe their relationship wasn’t irretrievable if she didn’t want it to be.

  And there was Kitty: miserable, conflicted, puzzled, and very frightened.

  *All right?* Ronan asked her.

  *So far, so good.*

  She felt Ronan begin to soothe Kitty in a way that was gentle and loving, but not at all sexual. Kitty’s thoughts were all on the surface. She was Kitty Keely, Alphacorp spy. No that’s what she had been.

  Ronan pushed the first layer aside gently.

  She was Kitty Keely, beginning to feel at home in the Free Company.

  Ronan peeled another layer away.

  She was Kitty Keely in mourning for Wes Orton, her lover, killed doing his duty, guarding Bay 22. It was a relationship cruelly ended before it had begun.

  That layer buckled, showing what was underneath.

  She was Kitty Keely, and her mom was so sick. She needed specialist treatment, expensive specialist treatment. Miraculously, Alphacorp offered to pay for the private clinic, but Kitty had to earn the bounty. She had to assimilate into the free Company on Crossways. How hard could it be?

  Below that layer was a door.

  *Are you still all right?* Ronan asked.

  *You want that door opening?*

  *That’s the idea.*

  *Right.*

  It was as if Ronan leaned against the barrier, pressing but not hard enough to move it.

  She felt as though she was putting her shoulder to it and pushing. Still no movement. She tried again.

  *It won’t work like this, Ronan. How desperately do you want to get through?*

  *We need to know what happened to her.*

  *Stand back.*

  Cara studied the door for a while. Then, without warning, she sent out a thought like a battering ram and down it went.

  A black oily cloud billowed out from the door and Cara felt a deep murderous rage. She threw herself backward and snapped the connection closed, feeling strong arms around her. She bent over, retching.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  CHENON

  CARA FELT LIKE A RAG DOLL IN BEN’S ARMS.

  “It’s over now. You did it. It’s all right.”

  He blessed Kitty if this was what it took to get Cara into his arms. But, of course, it was only temporary. She shuddered and took her own weight, standing with barely a wobble.

  She swallowed hard and nodded. “Thank you.”

  So formal.

  “You’re welcome.”

  Cara turned to look at Kitty, her expression revealing nothing but pity.

  Kitty was in tears, crouched on the floor. She stared at her own bloodied knuckles and then looked up to where Syke knelt against the glass.

  “I’m not safe while I’m here. I want to go home.”

  “Back to your mother?” Syke asked.

  She looked at him and frowned. “Of course not. Foldspace. I want to go back to foldspace before I kill someone. Before I kill everyone.”

  “What would happen if we let her?” Ben asked. “Do you think the Nimbus would come for her? It started to develop in Solar Wind, in sick bay where she and Cho were. Coincidence, or was it trying to reclaim its own?”

  Ben crouched down with Cara and Syke. “Kitty, the Nimbus, the black cloud. Do you know what it is?”

  “Nimbus.” A small half smile played across her face. “That’s a holy name. Not dark at all. I want to go back.”

  “Can you understand it? Does it speak to you? Can you speak to it?”

  “It doesn’t speak. It simply is.”

  “Does it understand?”

  “It knows what I know. What we all know.”

  “Do you mean the people it’s taken?”

  “Taken?” She looked down at her knuckles. “It’s set us free. Let me go back. Send me home. You can all come, too.”

  “We like it here,” Ben said. “Is it angry with us?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why is it sending people to kill us?”

  She frowned. “Because it has to.”

  “What if it didn’t have to?”

  She shrugged.

  Hooked into eighteen channels, Cara was the first to pick up the news.

  *There’s an attack on Chenon!* She broadcast it to the whole of the Free Company.

  She’d not spent much time there; just a few months when she’d first joined Ben and the Trust, and had been preparing for the Olyanda mission. And then again when she’d gone back to rescue Nan and Ricky from Crowder. It wasn’t a planet that was dear to her heart, but many of the Free Company regarded it as home, or at least as a home-away-from-home. A few of them still had families there—parents, siblings.

  *How the—*

  Ben came racing into the office and flung open the cubicle door. “Details.”

  “Two battleships came through Chenon’s gates about six hours ago. They destroyed the defense grid on the first moon, and captured three jump gates. Since then, they’ve been bringing troop ships through. They’ve bombed Arkhad City from the air, taken the main spaceport, and their troops are landing. They’re not all professional soldiers, but they’ve got the numbers.”

  A small knot of people waited in the outer office, all anxious to know what was happening. Some wanted to know if Cara could get messages through to their families. They’d stayed out of contact so as not to involve loved ones in the Free Company by association, but this was different.

  *I don’t know more than that,* Cara broadcast. *More as I find out.*

  The rest of the morning saw the members of the Free Company mainly milling about in the canteen waiting for news, or simply waiting.

  Cara drew together all the Telepaths capabl
e of long-range comms, either solo or in pairs, and set them listening to the news channels on the tel-net. She contacted Saedi on Jamundi, and together they took turns to tie into the official and unofficial channels.

  A force of fifty thousand Nimbus ground troops had ringed Arkhad City and were slaughtering anyone escaping the bombed-out remains. Chenon’s own forces were countering. The Trust had sent a task force, much smaller in numbers, but with high-tech weaponry.

  “What can we do?” Cara forgot herself and gripped Ben’s hand as more information came in. Images would take a little longer, pinged through from gate to gate in information packets.

  “We’re two hundred against fifty thousand,” he said bleakly. “We can’t make much of a difference to the ground assault. Contact Rodriguez.”

  *Benjamin, you’ve heard,* Rodriguez said.

  *Yes. At least I’ve heard what’s on the regular channels. Is there anything else I should know?*

  *Arkhad City’s under siege, and the Trust compound there is gone. As near gone as we can work out, anyway. It looks like the Nimbus has been learning battle tactics from some of the captured troops.*

  *What about the south, Russolta?*

  *We’re trying to evacuate people from there. You know it?*

  *I was born there.*

  *Relatives?*

  *We brought out my brother and his two sons last year. What can we do to help?*

  *Unless you’ve an army tucked up your sleeve . . . *

  *We can help with the evacuation. Are their troops effective? The Nimbus used ordinary citizens on Butterstone and Jamundi.*

  *They have some military types and, dammit, some Monitors, so they’ve learned a trick or two. Not sure how that happened, perhaps the hive-mind extends to their human avatars. The troops aren’t all fully equipped, but even the civilians are behaving like soldiers. What one knows, all know.*

  *I get it. Effective.*

  *Effective enough. We’re putting more troops on the ground now to supplement the Trust’s forces. A joint effort between the megacorps, ourselves, and the Five Power Alliance.*

  *You’ll have every ship we can field for the evacuation.*

  *Dunkirk.*

  *You know your Earth history.*

  *It was the first thing your grandmother said when we decided to evacuate Russolta.*

  Ben let the conversation drop.

  “We’re going to Chenon, I take it,” Cara said.

  “You don’t have to come.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Garrick arrived at Blue Seven with Mother Ramona, trailing a dozen of Syke’s guards.

  “It’s not your problem,” Ben said when Garrick offered to help. “The numbers are against us.”

  “It’s not about numbers.”

  “Okay. Lend me every jumpship you’ve got.”

  “Yes, take them.”

  “And the ark.”

  Too big for everyday use, the ark, which had carried thirty thousand settlers racked in cryo pods could probably take ten thousand individuals crammed together in her hold.

  “Of course.”

  “We’ll need shuttles and pilots to fly them. It will leave Crossways light on pilots and vulnerable.”

  “We’ll risk it. We’re asking big things of the megacorps. Time to show we’re public spirited as well.”

  Cara fielded messages and made sure everyone knew what their job was and where they were going.

  For the evacuation, Ben put Jake in charge of the ark, complete with shuttles in her hold. He put Chloe Durand in charge of the Bellatkin.

  Solar Wind was last to leave, but would certainly not be the last to arrive. Cara slid into the comms chair, Gwala and Hilde took the two tactical positions, Dobson in engineering, and Wenna, out from behind her desk, at the systems station. It felt like old times. They didn’t have a copilot. Every available pilot had a ship of their own.

  Cara glanced at Ben. There he was again, doing whatever he could for the greatest good.

  Evacuating people who didn’t want to be evacuated, or perhaps hadn’t even grasped the need for it, wasn’t like taking a disciplined army off a beach. Civilians flapped. They wanted to bring their dogs, their mother’s antique clock, their prize bull, a bag of books, a picnic basket. Or maybe Auntie was in town and they couldn’t leave without her. The head of Constantine’s School for young ladies couldn’t possibly let his charges go without a note from a parent.

  Strong words were said.

  It proved that even the most settled of the inner system planets should have regular drills about what to do if and when invaders descended from space.

  Ben could cram ninety in a space designed for thirty if he used the hold space and shoved twenty people in the mess and another ten in the corridors.

  The ark stood by to receive refugees with every available shuttle doing trip after trip to and from the surface.

  Whoever had initiated the evacuation had laid down a few ground rules. Bring only food and water you can carry on your person or in a small bag, maybe a blanket if you can wrap it around yourself, but no picnic baskets, no mattresses, no clocks, no books, and certainly no prize bulls. Ben made an exception for dogs small enough to be carried and then wished he hadn’t as a determined teenage girl struggled under the weight of a mastiff with drooling jowls and a mean look in its eye.

  They’d set up access tubes to transfer passengers to the ark’s hold. These were gravity-free with handholds. Most of the passengers had never been in space before. Some threw up as soon as their feet lifted from the deck; others grasped the idea quickly and pulled their fellows along. The mastiff yowled like a baby.

  Ronan administered antiemetics and sedatives to those who needed them, but stocks weren’t bottomless, so mostly he smiled and told the unfortunates they’d be fine.

  Cara tuned into the main Chenon news channel and also listened out for updates and instructions from Rodriguez, now installed on the Worcester, the Monitors’ flagship. A hurried consultation had put Admiral Hawker, head of the FPA’s fleet, in charge of the whole operation. Word filtered back that the Nimbus’ strategy was remarkably like Admiral Henney’s, so the Nimbus either still had the grand old man or had learned from him.

  Ben hoped someone had the big picture, because he certainly didn’t. All he could do was concentrate on getting as many people as possible out of the vulnerable area around Corrigar Spaceport. Solar Wind was only one tiny part of a huge effort. For half a day they ferried confused, frightened people from the spaceport in Russolta to the belly of the ark. Then Rodriguez warned them the Nimbus army was on the move and the battleships were closing fast. Ben knew it would be his last trip, so he crammed in an extra ten people into the suit room and onto the flight deck, took off vertically, and disgorged another hundred into the ark’s hold.

  “I can be more use on the ark than here,” Ronan said.

  “Good luck.” Ben slapped him on the shoulder as he launched into the tube to follow the last of the passengers across.

  “Ask Rodriguez if we have time for another load,” Ben said. “There will still be people on isolated farms. If this had happened when Rion was still on the farm, he wouldn’t have been able to get to Russolta in time.”

  “But he would have known the country well enough to find somewhere to hunker down,” Cara said.

  As the last access tube detached, thankfully scoured clean by exposure to space, Jake took charge of the ark and pulled away.

  *Benjamin, we’ve had a request from the Trust,* Rodriguez said via his telepath. *There’s an evacuation request from an island called Norro.*

  *I know it,* Ben said, a knot in his stomach. *Crowder’s ex-wife.*

  *That’s right?*

  *Did he ask for me?*

  *I believe he said you’d know the north end of the island.*

  *Oh, yes
.* Ben’s jaw tightened and he looked at Cara.

  “Don’t do it,” she said.

  Ben huffed out a breath. “Damn Crowder. He knows I wouldn’t leave his family behind no matter what I think of him.”

  *How long have we got?*

  *It’s hard to tell. Norro isn’t on the direct flightpath from Arkhad City to Corrigar. You might be lucky.*

  Yeah, right. *Okay, Rodriguez. If the island isn’t in flames already, we’ll see what we can do.*

  Crowder finished the call to Rodriguez and smiled to himself. He knew Ben would take the bait. If anyone could snatch Agnetha Sigurdsdottir from the jaws of death, it was Benjamin. Success wouldn’t hurt Crowder’s standing with his daughters. Failure would at least show he’d tried, and had the added advantage that this Nimbus army would rid him of Benjamin and Carlinni permanently.

  Thank goodness his daughters had moved off Chenon. He’d been devastated at the time, but now all he felt was relief.

  As for the rest of planet, it was a travesty, a tragedy. He marshaled the words he’d need for the press interviews. He would be called upon; after all, he’d lived on Chenon. Could he manage that catch in his voice when he talked about all his friends? The press didn’t need to know he’d never made friends.

  Aggie had always been the one for making friends. He’d coasted behind her social skills, too intent on his job. If he’d missed her for anything after she left him, it was for the impeccable way she kept his social diary. He sighed. That and the sex, of course.

  This was not the time to think about sex.

  Everybody he’d worked with at Colony Ops was probably dead already. The Trust compound had been one of the first targets. Lawrence Archer, who had been acting head of department since Crowder moved to Earth, had died in the first wave. He was no great loss. However, if the enemy fleet had targeted the servers on both moons, they might have destroyed colony records, which would be much more difficult to replace than personnel.

  Crowder examined his feelings and found he didn’t have any. Oh, it was a tragedy and all that, but Chenon didn’t touch him on a personal level. Stefan had family, though. He must remember to be solicitous to the young man. His neural reconditioning hadn’t stripped him of his feelings toward his family. It had obviously been an excellent job. An operative with a very light touch had left Stefan appearing absolutely normal. Was it worth reminding the boy that he would have died alongside his parents and siblings had Crowder not brought him to Earth?