Crossways

by Jacey Bedford

  MOUTH

  Tells it straight

  ++

  &freec-crossways: Have you seen this vid? Top Trust official tries to wipe out Olyanda colony for platinum reserves. Thirty thousand settlers still missing. &freec-crossways wants to know where they are. Alphacorp involved. Reward for info.

  ++

  &sevenbaby: Is this for real?

  ++

  &cors: It happens. Look up Hera-3.

  ++

  &brontoman: Mighty suspicious. Benjamin involved in Hera-3 and Olyanda.

  ++

  &cors: wake up &brontoman That’s Benjamin nearly getting his ass kicked by 2 thugs on the vid. Fat guy is Head of Colony Ops for Trust. Much higher up the foodchain.

  ++

  &brunt: Looks like he ate the food chain.

  ++

  &brontoman: to &brunt So the guy’s got a little weight on him. So what?

  ++

  &sevenbaby: What’s the Trust say?

  ++

  &trust: Investigations being made into Olyanda accusations. All fabrication.

  ++

  &alphacorp: No links with Trust. Ari van Blaiden killed in an accident. All else is false

  ++

  &cors: that’s what they say.

  ++

  &sevenbaby: Is that vid a forgery?

  ++

  &pranadeep: Vid encoding clean. Not a forgery

  ++

  &sevenbaby: Looked up Hera-3. Serious shit. Thousands of civilians missing or dead. 1500 survivors brought out by Benjamin.

  ++

  &brontoman: He’s a fucking hero.

  ++

  &yerad: I lost a sister on Hera-3. Trust should answer.

  ++

  &brontoman: Yeah, Trust should answer.

  ++

  &pranadeep: Selling my shares.

  ++

  &sevenbaby: If I had shares I’d be selling them too.

  ++

  &pranadeep: Arquavisa looks like a better bet for investment, or maybe Eastin-Heigle.

  ++

  &cors: Sterritt Corporation has a better rep for ethical operations.

  ++

  &sevenbaby: Yeah, that’s what they say. Do U believe it?

  ++

  Cara scrolled down the comments on Mouth from her desk in Wenna’s office, then checked the ones from Earth, Kemp’s World, the Hollands System, and Aqua Neriffe. It was all more of the same, but one thing was sure. The vid had gone viral.

  She wandered through into Max’s office next door. “You know about the markets. Is there any way to tell if this adverse publicity is hitting the Trust and Alphacorp financially?”

  “I’ll check.” He flicked through several options on his holo-screen. “Well, would you look at that.” He looked up.

  “Good news?”

  “Alphacorp’s down a little. The Trust is down significantly.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  “It looks promising.”

  Kitty sat in a booth in the Ocean coffee shop. The coffee wasn’t as good here as the Blue Mountain, but it was the venue preferred by the station guards, and since Wes’ funeral she felt closer to them than to the Free Company’s psi-techs. It was midmorning and Syke wouldn’t be here for another hour. She’d heard Benjamin had released a vid and some files into the S-LOGosphere, but she hadn’t had the opportunity to sit down and study it yet. Obviously Alphacorp had seen it by now, so there was nothing to report to Remus than wasn’t already known.

  She activated the privacy baffle on the booth and watched the vid all the way through on her handpad, then read the transcription. Her scalp prickled when she saw Crowder actually admit to trying to wipe out a whole colony.

  She read on. Ari van Blaiden’s files linked him to Crowder and the attack on Hera-3.

  Then she saw something in van Blaiden’s files that made her blood feel as though it was congealing in her veins. She left her coffee cup still almost full and bolted outside to hail a passing tub. She could be back at Blue Seven in five minutes. She waved at the man on reception and he unlocked the door through the barbican and let her in.

  “Where’s Cara?” she asked Wenna when Cara’s desk was empty.

  “Getting a new apartment habitable for Ben’s family.”

  “Where?”

  “Upper deck, 2B, but you might . . .”

  That was all Kitty heard because she was already halfway across the atrium with the door softly closing behind her before Wenna finished.

  “Cara. Cara!”

  The apartment door stood partly open and Kitty rapped loudly and went straight in. Cara was on her knees in front of a large pot filled with growing medium and surrounded by smaller pots containing various plants, some green and some pink.

  “Oh, hi, Kitty. Do you know anything about flowers? Ben’s family will be moving in here and I thought they might appreciate a planter. It’s hardly a replacement for a farm, but it’s a bit less clinical if there’s something growing. Only I’ve forgotten everything I ever knew about gardens.”

  “I think you pretty much just stick them in and water them. Make sure you disturb the roots as little as possible.”

  “I don’t know if the pink-leaved plants and the green-leaved ones are compatible.”

  “There’s only one way to find out.” Kitty knelt on the opposite side of the planter. “Tallest one in the middle?”

  “Back corner, I think. Yes, there. You hold it, I’ll firm up around it. Thanks.”

  “Cara, I watched the vid and read the reports. How did you get those files from Ari? Surely not after his death? Wouldn’t they have self-erased?”

  “They would. They did. All Ari’s private files self-erased.”

  “So . . .”

  Cara sat back on her heels and looked at Kitty through the foliage. “Did he make you think you were the only person in the world for him?” she asked. “Was he witty and smart and devastatingly great in bed? No, don’t answer that. Ari slept his way to the top in Alphacorp, did you know that? He used sex to get his own way. You, me, Craike—”

  “And Akiko Yamada?” Kitty’s voice shook.

  “That’s how Ari got a seat on the board and promoted to head of Special Operations so quickly. Oh dear, Kitty, did you think you were the love of his life?”

  “What? No. I just didn’t know about Ms. Yamada.”

  “She wasn’t just his lover, she was his business partner. Crowder confirmed it.”

  “Crowder must have been lying.”

  “About many things, but not about that. Crowder certainly had a mole in Alphacorp.”

  “You’re wrong. You’ve got to be wrong!” Kitty jumped to her feet and ran out into the atrium.

  If Cara was right, it meant that information Kitty’d fed to Alphacorp had fed straight through to the Trust and had probably contributed to the attack on the Solar Wind.

  It was her fault that Wes had died.

  Even the trip to Blue Seven in one of the crazily painted little tub-cabs had been exciting. Ricky had craned his neck to see everything as the cab whirled them through canyons, into tubes and along wide-open roadways where other cabs, manned and automatic, jostled for position. It was as good as a fairground ride. All the time, Dad had stared resolutely at his own feet.

  Gwala and another of Captain Tengue’s men—or maybe it was a woman, hard to tell under the buddysuit and helm—rode with them. Gwala’s helm was in his lap, but his hand wasn’t far from a sidearm that Ricky guessed was not a smart-dart gun. Despite his obvious on-duty attitude Gwala pointed out one or two things as they passed: a side tunnel that led to a street market, but not the sort of street market a boy should go to on his own; a residential area which was respectable enough to have a school; a warehouse district. Ricky had
asked about the hum of machinery as they passed through one area. Waste recycling, he was told. Human waste. Ricky had curled his nose, but he knew that a space station couldn’t afford to ignore resources, including bodily byproducts.

  With one last whoosh their tub popped up from its tube into the open and pulled in next to the tub that carried Nan and Kai and two more of Blue Seven Security’s finest. He recognized Hilde even though she wore her helm, but the other one was completely anonymous. He wondered what Nan and Kai had been talking about. Kai was bummed about leaving university, and his friends. He understood why, but he was still bummed.

  Well, that put him one step ahead of Dad, who was still insisting none of this drama had been necessary.

  Uncle Ben met them at the pull-in, hugged Nan and shook Dad and Kai’s hands before patting Ricky on the shoulder. “Well, this is it,” he said. “Blue Seven. It will be great when it’s finished.”

  “It looks finished to me,” Ricky said.

  “This is just the entrance, there’s a whole lot of work happening behind the facade.”

  The triangular entrance had two glass-fronted offices, one on each side, which funneled down to a set of doors, firmly closed. Their guards nodded politely and went into the left-hand office. Ricky tapped the glass. It looked like glass, but didn’t feel like it or sound like it.

  “Metal.” Uncle Ben saw him. “Blastproof. This way.” He led them through the right-hand office, nodding to the man behind the counter and the woman working on a holo-screen on the back wall. “This is manned 24/7. Don’t let the bright young things fool you, they may look like receptionists, but they’re all combat trained and at least Psi-4 level Telepaths. And across the way the other office is manned by Morton Tengue’s guards.”

  Uncle Ben passed his handpad across the code block and the door in the back of the reception office opened into a tunnel twenty meters long. Ricky looked up. There were ports in the ceiling and security cams to cover the place from all angles, plus vents at floor and shoulder height.

  “It’s like a prison,” Dad muttered quietly.

  Not quietly enough. “This is a barbican,” Uncle Ben said. “There have been two serious attempts on us since we arrived here. The perimeter precautions are not overdone, believe me. There are multiple independent surveillance systems in here and two separate gas release systems. Nothing lethal, but very effective. And the ports are for weapons. It’s like the killing-ground entrance to medieval castles that had murder holes in the ceilings and a portcullis at either end.”

  “You have portcullises?” Ricky asked.

  “Kind of, but they’re blast doors.”

  “Cool,” Ricky said.

  “What’s to stop people cutting through the walls or the floors?” Nan asked.

  “Reinforced internal skins with sensors. And no service vents, ducts, or plumbing wider than twenty centimeters. This place could even sustain its own atmosphere in case of extreme emergency, for a while, anyway.”

  The outer door closed behind them before the inner door opened. Inside Blue Seven the scene was completely different. The grays of the barbican gave way to a bright open space with a central atrium open to an azure blue roofspace that looked an awful lot like sky even though Ricky knew it couldn’t be. Under the atrium at one side was a set of doors.

  “Offices that side,” Uncle Ben said. “Mine, Max’s, Marta Mansoro—she looks after stores and supply. Wenna’s is the main one. She’s in charge here.”

  “I thought you were,” Ricky said.

  “Well, sort of, but the only way this works is if you let people do what they’re best at. Wenna’s a great administrator and she keeps things running smoothly. Max is good with figures, so he has that end office there, and he looks after all our finances, which at the moment are in minus numbers.”

  “I thought you were rich.”

  “It’s not quite as simple as that.”

  “Nan told us about the platinum.”

  “It may be a year or even longer before we start to see much of a return from the platinum on Olyanda. There are surveys and construction before the ore is even mined. The extraction process can take another six months. Platinum isn’t found on its own; it’s usually mixed with other platinum group metals, gold and palladium. It takes around four and a half tons of ore to produce a single gram of platinum. Once you’ve got the pure platinum it has to be baked in a reaction chamber to make the jump gate rods.”

  “So you’re not rich.”

  Uncle Ben laughed. “Not so much. Not yet, anyway.”

  Dad looked around. “So where did all this come from?”

  “Mother Ramona and Norton Garrick arranged a line of credit against future expectations.”

  “So you’re up to your ears in debt,” Rion said.

  “Yes, brother, if you want to put it that way, we are. We’re psi-techs. We’re used to debt. It’s how the megacorps hold us close.”

  Nan was nodding. “I was lucky enough to be released from my contract, thanks to your grandfather.”

  “Now that’s a story I’d like to hear,” Uncle Ben said.

  “And it’s a story I should tell, at last. There are things you all need to know, but let’s settle in first.” She winked at Ricky and put her finger to her lips in a brief shushing gesture.

  Malusi Duma. Ricky pinched his mouth together. That was something that he knew that neither Kai, Dad, nor Uncle Ben did.

  Uncle Ben led them further into Blue Seven. The atrium ran through the middle like a two-story canyon with a balcony running the length of the upper deck, both sides with lots of doors and windows.

  “Are these apartments, Uncle Ben?”

  “That’s right. They’re not all finished yet, but this is where we’ll all be living.”

  “Rabbit hutches,” Dad said, but Uncle Ben ignored him and led them up an open stair to the upper balcony.

  Two black and white farm dogs met them at the door, tails wagging, turning ecstatic circles.

  “Tam, Lol.” Rion dropped down on one knee and let the dogs try to bowl him over in their happiness.

  “You’ll all be staying here, for a while at least,” Ben said. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but ask Marta Mansoro for anything you want—within reason, Ricky, please—and she’ll try and get it for you.”

  “Is there any chance I could get a message through to . . . someone on Chenon?” Kai asked. “I left in a bit of a hurry and she . . . well, she deserves an apology and a good-bye, at least.”

  “Someone special?” Uncle Ben asked.

  “Just a good friend. She would have been heading back to Drogan’s World after exams, anyway.”

  “Has she got an implant?”

  Kai shook his head. “Does that make it difficult?”

  “Audio and video messaging has been sporadic since the Trust started trying to jam our data packets at the gates. You know how that works, right? Messages sent to the local gate, squirted through in compressed bursts while the gates are open and forwarded from the receiving gate into the local network. As soon as the Trust hacks into our feeds we counter it, of course, but that means the network is unreliable. Generally we’ve asked people to save it for the really important stuff. The tel-net is still up and running, though. That’s short messages transmitted mind-to-mind over interstellar distances and then committed to whatever global network is open locally. The Trust can’t stop that, even though some of their own Telepaths are unofficially involved. Cara would normally—”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to ask her right now.”

  Uncle Ben smiled. “She’ll be good as new in a few days. Better, maybe. In the meantime Cas Ritson can get a message through the Telepath network. Keep it short.”

  “Open sky.” Dad looked around him with disapproval and peered into the long apartment, a bare living space in the middle with doors at either si
de and a window at the far end.

  Ricky peered out. “What’s outside?”

  “It’ll be a garden eventually, but right now it’s just a building site,” Uncle Ben said. “I told you it’s not finished yet.”

  “I’m finished.” Dad leaned on the far windowsill and Ricky thought he was staring out at the people working below, but he rested his forehead against the glass. “I can’t stay here. I can’t.”

  Nan walked up behind him and put her hand on his shoulder, soothing him like he was a child. “It’s only for a short while, Rion. Reska will find us somewhere else to stay, a planet with open skies and good grassland.” She turned to Uncle Ben, a pleading look in her eyes. “Won’t you, Reska?”

  “Uh . . . I’ll try.”

  Nan motioned him out with a sideways jerk of her head. Ricky looked at Kai and Kai looked back at Ricky. With such a large age gap they’d never been really close, but they each recognized a look that said: I’ve never seen Dad like this before.

  Ricky’s world began to crumble. His dad, who always knew what to do and how to do it, was having some kind of meltdown. He turned to Uncle Ben, but in the face of his brother’s discomfort, he’d fled.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  DEFECTION

  GABRIUS CROWDER WOKE UP.

  That was a surprise.

  He was in a hospital bed, drips in his arm, and Aggie was sitting by his side. Another surprise.

  “How are you, Gabe?”

  “Unless this is a very strange heaven, or hell, I seem to be alive.” His voice cracked. He cleared it, then swallowed. “Rough throat.”

  “You were on a ventilator. They took the tubes out about two hours ago. You nearly died.”

  “Three darts.”

  “Doctor Mayweather says you have the constitution of an ox. He’s never seen anyone survive three darts before. Lucky for you that you’ve put so much weight on.”

  He didn’t tell her that he’d spent some time building up an immunity to a variety of toxins. There was still no guarantee, depending on the dosage.