What was the point in having a state-of-the-art jumpship if you didn’t use it to its best advantage? Solar Wind couldn’t dock at any one of Chenon’s spaceports—she was probably on every watchlist in the galaxy—but Ben figured he could bring her out of foldspace in the lee of Tobar, Chenon’s second moon, and then, in a snap, jump back through the Folds into the upper atmosphere above the southern continent and land at the farm. If he did it fast enough, a small blip on anyone’s screen would vanish almost immediately and would be taken as an unverified anomaly.
Rion would snark, but he’d empty out the big barn to get Solar Wind under cover. It would be good to see Rion again, if they could avoid bickering.
His team could catch a variety of regular flights to Arkhad city in ones and twos without raising suspicion. If there was one thing Mother Ramona excelled at it was forgery, so false idents weren’t a problem, though they took time to set up properly.
Extracting Nan and Ricky was his primary objective, but if he got the opportunity to have a significant, and possibly terminal, conversation with Crowder about lost settlers, he’d take it.
Ben wasn’t looking forward to convincing Rion that leaving Chenon was the best option. His brother was pigheaded. You could only do so much to persuade Rion if he didn’t want to be persuaded. He’d made an art form of intransigence. The boys would be upset, too, Kai, at any rate, since he was close to the end of a university course. Ricky, not so much. The kid would love to see something of the galaxy, though he wouldn’t want to leave his dad behind.
Think about that later. Getting Nan and Ricky away from Crowder safely was the first task.
Out of the shower he flicked on the external monitor in his cabin while he pulled on the bottom half of his buddysuit and a singlet and sipped a cup of tea from the dispenser. Dobson should be here soon.
Something flickered on the edge of his screen. Not Dobson. Six figures in buddysuits wearing helms and breathers. They moved quickly with no wasted effort, reminding him of the Alphabet Gang who had originally stolen the Solar Wind with him, snatching it from Ari van Blaiden’s private dock. Mother Ramona had employed them, had trusted them, and they’d done their job well and been paid well for it. Six thieves he’d known briefly as Bravo, Delta, Echo, Papa, Oscar, and Sierra. He counted the moving figures again. Six.
Oh shit! He raced for the Solar Wind’s flight deck, tea mug spilling behind him, forgotten.
Ben felt the limpets engage, saw the intruders running for the exit, heard the klaxon that announced the bay doors opening and dock depressurization. He’d never make it out in time if he left the Solar Wind.
Four limpets.
Enough bang to take out the ship.
And the ship’s drive had enough power to blow a hole in Crossways. This wasn’t just about killing him, it was about asset denial.
If only he had more telepathic ability, but without Cara close by he was useless. He scrambled up the access tube to the flight deck and opened the comms on a general frequency.
“Emergency. Port 22. Clear the port. Seal all the internal blast doors.” He dropped into the pilot’s chair. “Get all your security teams to safety.”
*What’s going on, Benjamin?* Mother Ramona’s Telepath, Ully, linked instantly.
*Four limpets. I don’t know how long we’ve got. Protect the station. Could be the Alphabet Gang,* he told her.
*Sealing the area. Sending a team to Port 22.*
There was a pause and Mother Ramona cut in on Ully’s link. *Bastards disabled guards and left them inside to chew on vacuum. I’ll get their sorry asses for this, Benjamin. Suit up and get out of there.*
“No time,” Ben muttered to himself. He had options, but none of them good. “Four options,” he said out loud, but two of them were certain death.
*Ben.* Cara tried to connect and he pushed her away mentally. The drives were online now and he needed all his concentration.
Four: stay where he was, die with the Solar Wind and anyone inside the blast radius. Chance of survival: zero.
*Ben!*
Three: get out into space and as far away from Crossways as he could before the limpets blew. Save the station. Chance of survival: zero.
*Ben!*
Two: get out into space and set the Solar Wind on an automatic heading and try to hit an escape pod before she blew. Chance of survival: minimal.
*Ben!* Cara’s urgent mental cry tore down his defenses. She sounded so close.
*Where are you?* he asked.
*On my way to Port 22.*
*Get out. Get out of the sector. Behind blast doors. Go! Run!*
*They’re going to repressurize the docking bay.*
*No.*
Ben saw the outer jaws begin to close. He lifted Solar Wind on her antigravs, praying that the limpets were on a timer, not docked to his drive ports. He engaged and shot forward.
One: hit foldspace immediately and hope to hell the laws of physics didn’t follow him in. Chance of survival? Who the hell knew!
With a rush, the Folds took him.
Humans shouldn’t be here. The black is unfathomable. Beyond comprehension. How can flesh and blood pass through every point in space and time at once—and live? Foldspace is infinite, as the universe is infinite, yet small enough to vanish inside a single neuron in the human brain.
It’s not real, Ben tells himself as a creature swims through the flight deck—one that he fervently hoped he would never see again. Pilot-Navigators, when they’re drunk enough, talk about dragons in the depths of foldspace, void dragons. According to the training manuals they are nothing but figments of the imagination, but it’s difficult to remember that when faced with one.
The creature is huge, its head as big as a man. It’s like a cross between a lizard and a giant sea horse with a beard, prehensile strands with claws on the end that move as if sentient. Part scales, part leathery hide, it does have a color, but he’s not sure whether he can describe it in words that relate to the spectrum he knows. Iridescent would be the closest. It has a long, snake-like body coiled into the center of the flight deck, wings furled.
In its own way it’s beautiful, but utterly terrifying, not because of any threatening behavior, but purely because it shouldn’t exist, but somehow it does. Any creature that lives in this void between realities should, logically, be completely alien, beyond understanding, yet here is a creature from Earth’s mythical past. Logic tells him that this cannot be. The only way a void creature could own this shape is if it’s stolen the image from humankind, and if that’s the case he doesn’t want to think how.
Even as he rejects the idea, he wonders what really happens to the ships lost in foldspace with their human cargoes. His insides turn to liquid and he wants to throw up.
The void dragon turns toward him as if it’s noticed him for the first time and he quickly looks away, his heart pounding, breath coming in rapid gasps.
Calm down.
Nothing is real in the Folds unless belief makes it so.
The limpets, they are real or they will be when . . .
He tries to stop thinking about them. They are not real. They are not going to blow. They are not!
He closes his eyes and remembers the muffled clang-thud as they attached to the outer hull. He can track their position by those sounds. The hull is real, the sound is real, but the limpets aren’t. What limpets? No limpets here. Nothing to see. Move along.
He releases his harness and stands quickly, shooting upward.
No bloody gravity! Great. Just what he needs.
And then because he’s forgotten to believe the Solar Wind is real for a moment, he drifts up through the deck plating, through the insulation cavity and breaches the outer hull into the vacuum of space.
Unprotected.
Thirty seconds? A minute? Two minutes, maximum.
That’s all
he’s got, if he’s lucky.
Ten seconds before the saliva on his tongue starts to boil. Fifteen seconds to unconsciousness. After that nothing matters. No one is out here to snatch him back.
Fifteen seconds. That’s all he’s got.
His instinct is to hold his breath but he has to breathe out to protect his lungs.
He pushes panic away and scrambles for a handhold, suddenly believing intensely in the reality of the Solar Wind. She rewards him by crushing his left wrist in solid plating. He gasps and tries to drag free, but she holds him in her bone-grinding grip.
Why isn’t he dead yet?
Is there air? No, of course not, that’s ridiculous.
His lungs begin to ache.
Yes, yes. Of course there’s air. Air and pressure and warmth. A little pocket of atmosphere around him. Believe it.
He inhales.
There’s air.
He sees movement out of the corner of his eye. He turns in slow motion, still caught by the wrist, still in zero gravity.
The void dragon—the bloody enormous void dragon—rushes toward him, scaled and clawed, eyes bright as hot coals. It unhinges its lower jaw, belches flames and roars.
Of course it does, it’s a dragon.
His heart stops.
This is not the way he planned to die.
Then . . .
Two things. How can he hear a dragon roar in space? And what are those flames feeding on in a vacuum?
No!
He doesn’t believe in fire.
The dragon snaps its jaws shut on nothing and looks puzzled. Such a human look on an alien creature emboldens him. Nothing is as it seems.
Ben believes his left hand is free, so it is, though it still damn well hurts. He pushes off the outer hull of the Solar Wind and believes with heart and soul that he will grasp the dragon’s neck between the jutting spines.
His fingers touch scales, warm, liquid metal. Alive. Sentient.
There, got it. Now, fly, my friend.
I believe you can fly.
It twists in a leisurely manner, a helical dance. Ben hangs on, weightless, and rolls with it, getting a good view of the underside of the Solar Wind. He’s going to believe that the hull is solid, but until he’s close enough to kiss them, the limpets are no more than pimples, teats on the underbelly of the mother ship.
The void dragon unfolds great ribbed wings that creak like old leather. They beat down with a snap. He doesn’t let himself wonder how wings work in space, he just believes that they will. It flies him to the first limpet. He reaches out. As his fingers touch the device he believes in its reality, disengages it, snaps on the safety and hurls it away.
It speeds along its trajectory, diminishing in size and threat.
The dragon waits for him.
He deals with the second limpet, and the third in similar manner.
As the third one speeds away he wonders how far his belief can affect this strange place. He concentrates on the receding limpet until it’s a tiny dot in the distance and then he reimagines its existence. The safety is off. Its interrupted countdown resumes. It explodes, a brief, silent flare as the available molecules consume themselves in a vacuum.
This is too easy, the void dragon is too compliant. This should never be working. He starts to wonder what might go wrong.
The backlash of the blast hits him. He’s ripped from the void dragon as it fragments into a cloud of shards, each with the velocity of a bullet. All he can think is how beautiful it is as it envelops him.
It’s beyond pain.
Meat, bone, blood. He’s reduced to his component parts.
And when his body is no more, only his mind is left. He sees a network of neurons and synapses, glittering like a helmet that he’s worn all his adult life, but on the inside.
A sinuous shape glides through what’s left of him. Void dragon. How can he see it without eyes?
How can he still be conscious? Is this how death works? He’s always believed that death is the long dark nothing. . . .
Belief.
He’s stopped believing.
He must believe again.
Rebuild himself.
Meat, bone, blood into skeleton, organs, muscle, and skin. He tries to think how a man is made, but his knowledge of anatomy isn’t up to the task. Besides, there’s more to a man than his component parts. Can he reconstruct every blood vessel, every organ? Dammit, he doesn’t even know how the bones in his wrist fit together. Though he knows how much they can hurt when they are smashed.
His left wrist begins to ache where the Solar Wind held it in her not-so-tender embrace.
Hurts.
Good. Fasten onto the pain, that sense of a wrist and use it to build on. Wrist, hand, fingers, handpad—as much a part of him as his own flesh and blood. Forearm, elbow, upper arm, shoulder . . .
It takes an eternity.
It’s done in a flash.
He’s complete again.
A glittering neural net floats beside him for a moment. The void dragon noses it, seems to inhale and it’s gone.
No matter.
He does an elegant backflip, glides to the last limpet, releases it from the hull, and hurls it away.
Success.
For a moment he thinks how unlikely this all is. Hard vacuum rushes in on him again. Moisture on his bare arms evaporates. He blinks. Ice on his eyeballs crackles. He has fifteen seconds before he passes out. The plating is solid to the touch. He can’t imagine it soft enough to move through. He lets air dribble out of his lungs and tries not to suck on the searing nothingness.
Hatch. Emergency hatch.
Dizziness threatens to overwhelm him. His chest is one fierce ache.
He pulls himself hand over hand, but his left hand is barely functional. He yanks the release mechanism with his right. It springs. He tumbles inside. As darkness closes in he smacks the air lock control.
He comes to in a disordered heap on the air lock floor. Gravity drags him down, chokes him with his own weight. He rolls over sideways, throws up, and passes out again.
The next time he comes around he manages to reach the door release and he commando-crawls into the corridor dragging his left arm. The ship feels solid beneath him.
Keep believing it’s solid.
Got to get the ship out of the Folds.
How long has it been?
Too long.
If he can’t find his way out again, it’s all been for nothing.
Slowly, slowly, he climbs up from the belly of the ship to the flight deck, through the cargo hold and crew quarters, past his own cabin and to the final shaft. No antigrav here, just a steep companionway halfway between a ladder and a stair. He wraps his good arm around the rail and pushes his feet onto the first tread.
He arrives at the top sweating and shaking, but manages to stagger to the pilot’s chair and collapse into it. He powers up the jump drive and searches for a way home.
Home to Crossways.
The Folds are black, amorphous, ineffable. He can’t see a way through. Is he so deep in that he’ll never get out? He checks the time. No, that can’t be right.
He sinks a little more deeply into the chair. Out is more important than where right now. But he can’t see the way.
He’s lost the line.
Lost the line . . .
Chapter Fourteen
LOST
CARA JUMPED UP, SPILLING COFFEE ACROSS the table into Tengue’s lap.
“Attack on Port 22,” she said unnecessarily. Tengue had received the news at the same time as her.
It would take ten minutes at least to get to Port 22 by tub-cab, but it was the only option. Cara reached out for Ully, Mother Ramona’s Telepath.
*Update on Port 22?*
Ully brought Mother Ramona in on
the conversation instantly.
*Can you reach your security?* Cara asked.
*Negative,* Mother Ramona said. *Assume they’re down. Sending reinforcements.*
*How long?*
*Minutes.*
Cara called a general alert as she ran for the tubs. Tengue and Gwala and their squad had beaten her to the first available transport so it took at least another minute, though it felt like hours, for another tub to pull in for passengers. She leaped in, rocking it wildly. Ronan hit the seat next to hers, emergency pack in hand, and Archie landed next to him with a bag of bots slung over his shoulder, trailing little critters coming to his call. He lifted the flap of his bag and scooped up the last few. Surprisingly, it was Kitty who made it to the last seat.
As Cara’s tub pulled away blast doors rumbled closed across Blue Seven’s access. Wenna was locking down and going into fortress mode. An attack on the port may be a diversion preceding an attack on their HQ.
“Come on. Come on!” Cara muttered as the tub bounced into the main traffic lane. “Is this the best we can do?”
Ronan reached forward, slapped off the auto and shoved both hands into the manual control gloves. They ricocheted off the track wall, sideswiped a laden goods tub and pulled clear of the traffic.
“Faster!” Cara heard sirens in the distance, Crossways security she hoped.
*Ben?*
*Limpets.*
*On the Solar Wind?*
*At least four.*
*Hang on. Tengue’s team’s coming. We’ll defuse the bastards.*
*No time.*
Cara could feel part of Ben’s attention taken and then she realized what was happening. He was firing up the Solar Wind’s drive aiming to get her out of the docking bay before she blew. Before she blew with him inside it.
*Ben!*
“Ben!” Cara pounded her fists ineffectively on the solid docking bay door, leaving a smear of blood from broken knuckles. Through the view panel Solar Wind all but leaped between the closing jaws of the docking bay and winked out into foldspace.
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