Crossways

by Jacey Bedford

  Nan thumbed the safety off the bolt rifle, set it on spray burn and heated up the floor around the hole until it was glowing red and the reinforcing bar was twisting in the heat. “Stay back, you bastards,” she yelled. “First one through goes home without a head.” She glanced sideways at Cara. “What? I was trained in negotiation. Sometimes things got a little rough.”

  They ran for the grav shaft.

  “Push off hard,” Ronan said. “Like you would if you were playing grapple. Follow me.” He bent his knees and pushed, soaring upward with Nan in tow. Cara took hold of Ricky’s hand and followed him. Bronsen came next, closely followed by Archie. Gwala and Tengue came last, and Cara heard the crump of explosives as the stairwell collapsed below them.

  “Archie, can you take care of the grav shaft once we’re into the arena?” Cara asked.

  “Got one bot left.”

  *Hilde, are you there?*

  *Affirmative.*

  *Hover over the roof of the stadium. There’s a vent.*

  They shot upward into the stadium where spectators were still being evacuated. The null-G was back up to full strength. Cara caught the lip of a platform and pulled Ricky onto it. “You ever played grapple before?”

  “No.” His voice trembled. “But I’ve watched it plenty on the vid.”

  “Well, now’s your chance. See that bar up there?”

  “Right up there?”

  “Yes, that one. Push off from here, grab it with both hands, then get your feet on to it and aim for where Ronan is up there on the loop with your Nan. I’ll be close behind. You can’t fall. Don’t think of it as up and down.”

  “What if they cut the power?”

  “Gravity will come back slowly, just like it does in a grav shaft.”

  “Yeah, but there are no ladders to grab.”

  “Just jump for it, before the guys with guns get past that blockage on the stairwell.”

  Ricky jumped. Cara jumped after him. Bronsen and Archie had each taken different routes and were traversing across to the loop. Tengue and Gwala had halted by the head of the grav shaft to throw a flashbang down now that it was deactivated. There was a lot of healthy screaming as the crowd jostled to escape what had become a fiasco.

  Tengue had torn the marker tape from the head of the stairwell and was busy directing fleeing spectators down the staircase Crowder’s militia would be coming up. Cara suppressed a smile. Good man.

  Ricky had reached the bar, but hadn’t taken off again yet. “Like this.” Cara swung her feet up and launched herself toward the goal. She grabbed on to the loop and looked back. Ricky was still on the bar. She beckoned him toward her.

  “Hold Nan,” Ronan said and launched himself over to where Ricky clutched the bar, frozen. Everyone else had made it safely and Gwala was working on the roof vent catch three meters above their heads. One of Archie’s bots would be perfect, but they’d used them all up.

  Cara could see Ronan talking calmly to Ricky, but the boy had a thousand-meter stare. Suddenly he doubled over and puked, globules spraying out. Ronan just rubbed his back, took his hand and launched through the vomit, delivering Ricky to the loop.

  “Don’t worry about it. Most of us puke in free fall the first time,” he said as they landed. “Don’t make me tell you about my first time in a grapple arena. They made me clean it up myself. Didn’t tell me until afterward there were bots to do it.”

  “Got it,” Gwala said as the hatch cover sailed away.

  “Hilde’s in place,” Tengue said.

  The sound of a flyer’s drive droned above the roof canopy.

  “Okay, everyone,” Ronan said. “The antigrav field extends beyond the external skin of the sphere. Outside, grab onto anything you can to anchor yourself. The field weakens about three meters out and it is possible to slip out of it altogether. It’s a long way down.” He took Ricky’s hand firmly and powered off the loop toward the roof hatch and through it. “Come up one at a time and I’ll guide you through.”

  Bronsen shot up first and would have gone straight through at some speed, but Ronan caught him by the arm and pulled him sideways, out of sight.

  “Not so fast. Next,” Ronan called down.

  Archie went next, then Cara with Nan. She handed Nan through, then pulled herself over the lip and found everyone sitting, delicately balanced on the roof plate of the giant geodesic dome. Looking down made her head spin and she quickly looked up to where the flyer was hovering a couple of hundred meters away. Gwala and Tengue completed the crew.

  A roof plate to her right shattered and a bolt streaked upward, visible against the darkening sky.

  Tengue waved Hilde in and she hovered above the roof, the downdraft almost dislodging Cara from her precarious hold.

  “This is the difficult bit,” Ronan said as the craft’s open hatch loomed about four meters away from their position.

  He let go with both hands and bent his knees to jump, but Gwala beat him to it, the African’s powerful legs and long reach giving him the extra impetus to grab on to the hatch with what looked like his fingertips. He hung there for a few heart-stopping moments, then hauled himself inside and lowered a line. Ronan and Ricky first, Cara and Nan second. As Cara passed into normal gravity her limbs felt like lead. She teetered on the edge of the hatch, trying to push Nan upward. Gwala leaned down and grabbed Nan’s hands, then Cara’s, and she tumbled into the flyer, gasping.

  Another bolt shattered the roof plate where Cara had been sitting moments before. Nan rolled forward and covered the hatch with her bolt rifle still set on spray burn. Once the last man, Tengue, was safely on board, she sprayed the roof struts to heat them up.

  “Whoo-hoo!” She sat back on the floor of the flyer, clutching on to a cargo net. “That was a wild ride, children. I thank you all very much.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  CHENON

  *NAN AND RICKY ARE SAFE.* CARA’S Message rattled through Ben’s brain.

  *Everyone all right?* he asked.

  *Yes. No casualties, except Archie’s bots, but they died in a good cause.*

  *A trap?*

  *Yes. We had to get creative in zero gravity. Nan’s still laughing, though I think it’s relief. Did you know your Nan was a dab hand with a bolt rifle?*

  *Nothing Nan does ever surprises me. Much relief all around. See you soon.*

  *Soon.*

  Ben eased Solar Wind out of the dock. It was a clean exit, completely different from lurching out with four limpets ready to blow. The Folds had been his salvation then. Keep that in mind.

  “Jump drive powered up and online,” Kitty said.

  He almost snapped at her. He knew the bloody jump drive was online. He could feel it coursing through his body. “Thanks, Kitty,” he said, trying to keep his voice even.

  Jussaro looked at him sharply. *Can I help?*

  *No one can help. This is my fight.*

  *You don’t have to do it alone.*

  *He’s not alone,* Gen said.

  *Okay, I get that,* Jussaro said. *Let me swing along for the ride. A bit of mental ballast.*

  *Just don’t get in my way.* Ben looked across and scowled.

  *I won’t.*

  *Ready, Gen?* Ben asked.

  *Ready.*

  The jump gate in front of them grew from a pinprick on the screen to a maw big enough to swallow a ship three times their size. Ben positioned Solar Wind ready for the leap into foldspace, the hairs on the back of his neck standing to attention—or maybe it just felt like that. They got the signal from the gate Telepath.

  Ben continued to stare at the void.

  “Go,” Gen said quietly.

  He gave a short, sharp nod, but still hesitated.

  *Go!* she said again, but this time directly into his head.

  He swallowed convulsively and took a deep breath.
He’d been scared of water as a small child. This felt like the first time he’d stood on the bank, afraid to jump even though Dad was there in the pool to catch him. In the end the anticipation had been worse than the fear of jumping. He’d jumped so far and so fast that he’d barely touched the water and had landed on Dad’s chest, knocking him over backward and submerging them both. Dad had quickly fished him out, but not before that moment of infinite mortality when the water had closed over his head.

  Now Dad was somewhere in the Folds, no longer there to catch him.

  Ben swallowed convulsively, took a deep breath, and nudged Solar Wind through the gate.

  And that’s when it all fell apart.

  The flight deck is suddenly swirling with creatures of all shapes and sizes. They nudge and buffet him, their hot breath drying his eyeballs. Then they scatter, fleeing through solid bulkheads. In their place, one huge void dragon coils around him. It must be twenty meters long, snout to tail, and is etched black on black. The claws on its prehensile beard curl toward him and tickle his cheek while its dragon breath cools his flesh. He crosses his forearms in front of his face and its attention is taken by the protective casing around his wrist. It nudges it; once, twice, three times. It’s not just a creature. Its eye is infinity—his past and his future. His present is somewhere else entirely, but he doesn’t know where.

  *Ben, I need the line,* Gen says from a very long way away. *Ben, are you with me? I need the line.*

  He can’t answer her.

  She reaches across and smacks the void dragon’s snout. So she can see this one as well as he can. Kennedy was right. He’s not going completely crazy. He stares into its lambent eye and is lost.

  *Fuck it, Benjamin.* Gen’s voice comes from far away. *I didn’t think you’d really flake out on me. Taking control.*

  He hears her, but the dragon has him transfixed.

  They emerged into realspace with a gentle pop. No more dragon. Ben felt sweat cooling on his face. His heart rate must be off the scale. He forced himself to breathe. Without a word he unstrapped his harness, stood up, and walked away from the pilot’s chair. Gen slid into it.

  “Go and sit next to Gen,” he said to Max, his voice shaking.

  He couldn’t look Max in the eye. He flopped down into Max’s still-warm seat, next to Jussaro. Damn, he hadn’t given a thought to whether Jussaro had managed to get rid of his implant.

  *It’s real,* Jussaro said directly to Ben and Ben only. *I saw what you saw, a wyrm or a dragon or an alien. I don’t know what it was, but it was real and it was trying to make contact. It knows you. It’s not your mind playing tricks.*

  *Gen saw it, but it didn’t scare her.*

  *It wasn’t as big to Gen, not as threatening. The rest aren’t looking. They don’t believe. You’re not imagining things. You have to find a way to deal with this thing because it won’t leave you alone until you acknowledge it.*

  Ben got his breathing under control. *How the hell do I do that?*

  *I can’t help you there. All I can say is that you’re not going nuts.*

  *Thanks, Jussaro. Believe it or not, that is a help. But you’ve still got your implant.*

  *Yeah, your void dragon sidetracked me and I expected to have more time, but we’re doing another jump, aren’t we? A short one?*

  *A shorter distance covered doesn’t always mean a shorter jump.*

  “Get ready everyone,” Gen said, meaning, Get ready, Ben. “Jumping to foldspace in three, two, one.”

  Ben feels the jump drive kick in and immediately the void dragon is back. It coils itself around him again, making a mockery of the cabin dimensions. Half its body is through the bulkhead. One coil pierces Max’s chest, but he doesn’t react. He obviously can’t see or feel anything. Its tail snakes across the flight deck and out through the far bulkhead. Ben is heavy with fear. Paralyzed.

  Even though his mind tells him the void dragon can’t possibly be real, his gut tells him that it is. He’s ridden it, out there, in the vast deeps of the Folds, the nothing place between realities.

  He tries to imagine it gone, but it remains. Belief is not that easy to deny. The void dragon is real in this reality, and it wants something from him.

  Its head snakes around. He feels the whisper of breeze, ice cold on his mouth and nose. He holds his breath, afraid to breathe the air that the dragon has breathed out. The claws on the strands of the dragon’s beard twist and reach out to touch his forehead. He feels a pinprick on the tiny scar left by the implantation needle.

  No. No. No.

  His insides turn to liquid. Between one blink and the next he understands how he parted from his last implant. It wasn’t lost. It wasn’t an accident.

  *You took it!* He tries to communicate that thought.

  The void dragon echoes it back to him with a hint of assent. Or maybe it’s intent. It doesn’t seem to have words, but it has ideas.

  *Well, you’re not having this one.* He puts a thought into his mind that’s a mixture of no and stop.

  The void dragon responds with, *?*

  Ben wonders how to communicate the fact that his implant is supposed to be there, that he wants it to be there, that removing it will be a bad thing. Does the void dragon even have a concept of good and bad, of right and wrong?

  Across the cabin he sees Jussaro bent double in his seat, held in place by a lap strap. There’s a look of fierce concentration on his face.

  Oh, gods! He’s misled Jussaro. The thought sits like a stone in his gut. It wasn’t the effect of belief or the fluidity of foldspace that separated him from his first implant, it was the void dragon itself.

  Ben reaches out, trembling, and tugs at the strands of the void dragon’s beard.

  *Over there.* He puts Jussaro at the front of his mind, turns the great saurian head and points. *Take that implant.* (And leave me alone.)

  He hears a gasp as the beast turns its attention on Jussaro, which is less of a movement and more of a rotation of its coils until its head is in the right place.

  “What’s it doing?” Jussaro’s voice trembles.

  “It’s doing what you’re trying to do.”

  “I can’t . . . I don’t . . .”

  Jussaro gives a wordless cry. A glittering net of delicate tendrils floats beside him. He cranes his neck and looks at it, reaches for it with his fingers. Some of the strands begin to unravel.

  The void dragon breathes in and the implant is gone.

  Jussaro collapses over his own knees, sobbing quietly. For a few moments, Ben’s own misery is deluged by Jussaro’s.

  “Ben, get your ass back in this chair,” Gen yelled. “We’re in Chenon’s atmosphere and likely flaring across Corrigar’s tracking screens like an incoming meteor.”

  Ben blinked images of the dragon away and pushed down the terrors as if shaking off a nightmare. “Someone see to Jussaro. He might need a sedative.”

  Kitty jumped up from systems, but Max beat her to it and flopped back into the bucket seat Ben had just vacated.

  Gen slid over to copilot, and Ben once more had the Solar Wind under his control. This was okay. Flying in realspace was what he needed right now.

  *All right?* Gen asked.

  *Yeah, I’ll manage.*

  She looked at him sideways.

  *Don’t worry, I can handle it from here.*

  He brought Solar Wind screaming through the upper atmosphere, swept around and let her speed bleed away. “Kitty, what have we got on the screen?”

  “Airliner.” She snapped out the coordinates and heading.

  “That will do.” Ben matched speed and shadowed the liner across the southern continent to confuse any tracking signals, peeling off for Russolta just before Corrigar and skimming low over ancient woodland until the Benjamin family farm was on the horizon.

  The landing pad was a little small
for the Solar Wind, but he dropped her in neatly on antigravs, her fully flexed wings overhanging the pink grass equally on both sides.

  “What the hell is this?” Rion was waiting for him at the bottom of the ramp, Tam and Lol sitting by his side, their tails thumping the ground, but too well trained to leap and greet Ben without permission.

  It was always a shock to see Rion, only three years older according to their birth certificates, but because of Ben’s long periods of cryo on missions, effectively much older, steel gray at his temples already. His skin, actually lighter than Ben’s when they were children, had weathered to a deeper shade of brown. Rion’s mouth habitually turned down at the corners. The crinkles around his eyes were from squinting into wind, rain, and sun, not from laughter.

  “I love you, too, brother. This is a spaceship. My spaceship. I stole her.”

  “So the accusations are true. You’ve gone rogue.”

  Ben raised one eyebrow. “We can talk about it while you’re packing.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “We can talk about that while you’re packing, too.”

  “Nan and Ricky—”

  “Safe. Pack for them as well. Do you need some help?” Ben started to walk toward the house.

  “Dammit, Ben, what’s going on?”

  “I wondered when you’d ask that. Short version: Crowder tried to shaft ten thousand people on Chenon in order to get his hands on a planet-load of platinum, and he tried to kill three hundred psi-techs to stop the news from getting out. We weren’t too keen on the idea. Conflict ensued and now we’re on the wrong side of the law because the law is on the wrong side. Clear so far?”

  Rion’s mouth was still open.

  “And in addition there’s a missing boatload of settlers which we need to find. And you might be Crowder’s next target, so get packing.”

  “I can’t leave the farm. A thousand head of beef cattle, horses in the barn, the chickens, the dogs, the dairy herd.”

  “You won’t be any use to them dead. Call Bunty Jaeger. Get her boys to farm-sit for you until further notice.”