Crossways (13 page)

One of the otter-things passes right through Kitty, but she doesn't flinch. Can't she see it?

“Okay, Kitty. Find the line,” Ben says.

“What line? Where?”

He feels her on the edge of panic. Her hands freeze on the control panels. She hesitates. The seconds tick past. This isn't going to work. Why can't she see when the line to Olyanda shines so clear to him?

“Two minutes-thirty,” Ronan calls.

Ben glances at the timer on the forward screen.

“Kitty!” he says, sharply, but she doesn't respond. Her eyes have that thousand-meter stare.

He takes over from her, fixes his will on where he wants to be, finds the line and nudges the
Solar Wind
toward her destination, the space around Olyanda—not somewhere that he wants to gatecrash without permission.

With a pop that wasn't audible, but felt as if it should have been, the
Solar Wind
emerged into realspace two hours from the hot zone.

“Elapsed time: one hour forty-one minutes,” Ronan called. “Logged.”

Ben swallowed rising nausea and shook his head to clear it. Working out the time differential seemed to help clear his head. A ratio of one to thirty-eight this time. Much lower than last time, maybe because they'd entered foldspace via a gate.

There was always a dangerous moment of disorientation coming out of the Folds. Bursting into a newly militarized zone without identifying yourself wasn't advisable. Oleg Staple, formerly in charge of Crossways' hornets, the defensive fleet that was one of the station's deterrents, had set up a blockade to protect Olyanda from the sky while Leah Nolan, formerly head of Garrick's guard before Syke, commanded troops on the ground and managed the mining engineers.

Once he'd established they were in no immediate danger from friendly fire and he'd heard Cara broadcast their ID, Ben turned to Kitty. “Did you follow my line?” he asked.

She looked at him blankly. “How do you mean?”

“You felt the way I pulled us back out into realspace, right?”

She shook her head. “I couldn't see where you were going until you got there.”

“We'll try it again on the way home.”

“What if I never get it?” Her voice rose in pitch. “I'm not a Psi-1 Navigator like you.”

“Gen's a Psi-3. She got it first time out. Did you see the void creatures?”

“I saw—I don't know—something.”

“What did they look like to you?”

“Wisps of smoke. Blood in water.”

“No details? No faces?”

She shook her head. “Just shapes, appearing and disappearing. One of them looked like a teacher who used to bully me. Good thing they're not real.”

“What if they are?”

She looked at him sideways. “They're not.”

“Maybe we're the ghosts in foldspace and they're real. Or maybe, since, theoretically, when we enter foldspace we're passing through every point in space and time simultaneously, we're actually ceasing to exist in any of them for a moment. Maybe reality is only what we can hold onto in our mind.”

“So if we decided the monsters were real they could attack us?” She shuddered. “Maybe that's why the first thing they teach us in flight school is that they're not. I'm going to stick with that if you don't mind.”

If that was as good as he was going to get, maybe Kitty was right, she wouldn't ever get it. Not all pilot-Navigators did, despite what they told you was possible in flight school. Pity. It would have been very useful to have someone else who could pilot
Solar Wind
, especially with Gen's pregnancy.

“Permission granted to pass through the blockade,” Cara said. “Oleg Staple says good luck with the mercs. They've surrendered their weapons to Nolan and taken over what remains of the landing complex as their territory, but
they're not showing any signs of wanting to cooperate with the ground troops.”

“You know these guys, Kitty,” Ben said. “What's your take?”

“They're a tight unit. Good soldiers. Very professional. Did their job well, but liked to keep to themselves when they weren't working. I can see them not wanting to get sucked into a bigger force and losing their group identity.”

“I'm not taking
Solar Wind
down there,” Ben said. “If something goes wrong with these negotiations I'm not risking the mercs getting their hands on her. Yan can keep her in orbit and I'll take Kitty down in the Dixie to negotiate.”

“You're not going without me,” Cara said.

“Nor me,” Ronan said.

“Be reasonable,” Ben said. “The Dixie's only a two-man flyer.”

“With cargo space and a couple of bucket seats for emergencies,” Cara added. “We're only shuttling down from orbit.”

“You need a couple of Empaths,” Ronan said, “if you want to know whether Tengue's word is good.”

“Did you guys argue the toss as much when the Trust paid your wages and I had Commander on my pocket flap?”

Cara grinned at him.

The wider view of Olyanda as they dropped down through the atmosphere was of a planet with significant ice extending from the poles to cover maybe two thirds of the surface. The equatorial band was blue-green with ocean and fragmented landmasses. It had been a land of so much promise to the agrarian settlers who had hoped to make a home here, before the discovery of platinum dashed their hopes. Finding significant platinum deposits was like winning the lottery and then discovering your ticket was coated with poison. Unless you had the backing of one of the big megacorporations—in which case they'd take over administration, for your own good, of course—you might as well kiss your ass good-bye. Keeping platinum required significant firepower and a steady nerve.

From ten kilometers up Ben could already see the gray
scars of strip mining on the alluvial lowlands and a crater in the highlands where platinum nodes had been exposed. He was too high to see it from here, but one processing plant was already under construction and a second would follow shortly.

Not for the first time, Ben wondered about the ethics of resource stripping and the effect it had on the natural environment of a virgin world, but the need for platinum overrode all other considerations. The hungry jump gate system would crash without it. The voices of conservationists had been silenced by the might of the megacorporations.

Ben dropped the Dixie Flyer down to the field where the first shuttle ships had landed. Rows of low tunnel-shaped buildings, known as risers for their speed of construction, clustered around the original colony landing vehicle, a single-use, saucer-shaped craft used as the psi-techs' admin base. Wherever he looked there was blast damage, but the LV had survived and some of the risers still looked weather-tight. It had been his home, however temporarily. He'd worked with good friends, shared a bed with Cara, been part of its triumphs and disasters.

Beyond the temporary town the fat silver river flowed on undisturbed, its banks lined with broccoli trees. Suzi had had a fancy Latin name for them, but they looked too much like giant broccoli ever to have their real name applied except on reports.

Everything had seemed so hopeful only a few months ago. Ten thousand Ecolibrians, back-to-basics settlers, building homes and breaking new ground. It should all have been idyllic, but there had been trouble even before the platinum had been discovered. Lorient had been a nightmare from the first, a classic psi-phobe. And they wouldn't be free of him until the colony was resettled somewhere safe, and the thirty thousand missing settlers either found or finally laid to rest.

When Ari van Blaiden had arrived, intending to rip out a fortune in platinum and settle an old score with Cara at the same time, it had brought things to a head. Finally Lorient had focused on a bigger threat than the psi-techs and had accepted Ben's plan to sell Olyanda to the biggest crimelord on Crossways as the only way to get his people out alive.

Ben settled the Dixie a couple of hundred meters short of the flitter bays on an apron of fired earth. Close up, the whole of Landing looked like a war zone. If any of the flitters had survived the final fight, the Crossways ground forces hadn't left them for the mercs.

Ben let power bleed away and popped the door. “We'll wait here and see if we get a welcoming committee.”

“It looks deserted.” Ronan peered at the scanner, set to magnify. “Just a few wrecks. You're sure the mercs are here?”

“Sure as I can be,” Cara said. “Tengue said come in person. He didn't say he wanted to play hide-and-seek.”

“Leah Nolan's crew disarmed them,” Ben said. “Supposedly. They're on parole. If they don't cause trouble maybe—just maybe—they'll get a lift off planet. Let's hope they're sticking to the deal.”

“Captain Tengue was always totally professional,” Kitty said. “He kept the mercs in line.”

“Had they worked for van Blaiden before?” Ben asked.

Kitty shook her head. “I don't think so. There was a fair amount of negotiation before they took the contract, more than there might have been if they already knew each other.”

“Unfortunate to get employed by the losing side. I guess it's an occupational hazard.” Ben checked the derri in his thigh pocket and returned it to its place, satisfied.

It took about half an hour before the scanner revealed heat signatures and Ben spotted the first movement among the wrecked flitters. “I make it five—no, six—altogether.”

“They'll be armed,” Cara said. “These guys are resourceful. They're probably working out how they can get control of the Dixie right now.”

“Agreed,” Ben said.

“So what are you going to do about it?” she asked.

“I'm going to go and stand outside in full view.”

“Let me,” Kitty said. “They'll probably recognize me. It doesn't mean to say they won't take a shot, but it's less likely.”

“We'll both go,” Ben said. “Cara, Ronan, you've got our backs.”

Cara primed the bolt gun. Ronan picked up the long-range tranq rifle.

“Got you covered both ways,” she said.

Ben stepped out of the Dixie onto the fired earth, Kitty a couple of paces behind him, both close enough to make a dash back inside if they needed to. Cara crouched in the doorway, her finger lightly on the bolt gun trigger, barrel pointed down toward the ground. Ronan stood close behind.

Ben watched the approaching figures through narrowed eyes. “Do you know them, Kitty?” he asked, soft-voiced.

“Not all by name. The guy out in front is pretty levelheaded. Uh-oh, the one behind him is bit of a hothead. The rest aren't troublemakers, though. The big black guy is Gwala. Wins all the hand-to-hand competitions. The last one is Morton Tengue.”

“I'm here to talk,” Ben shouted when the shadows stopped moving on the edge of the flitter wreckage.

“What about the two in the flyer?” Tengue shouted back.

“Insurance. What about your five guys skulking in the shadows?”