Crossways (24 page)

She was just working out whether she intended it to be a sign or not when she felt the mental handshake that announced Cas Ritson's presence in her head. Cas was the other Psi-1 Telepath in the Free Company, solidly dependable.

*Hey, Cas, everything all right?*

*No more assassins, if that's what you mean.*

*Serafin?*

*Recovering as expected.*

*Then . . . *

*Message for Ben. Kind of an odd one.*

*Odd in what way?*
Cara had brought Ben in on the conversation and he frowned at the word, odd.

*It came in on an old ident code via S-MAIL on a public channel. Mother Ramona picked it up. Said it took a couple of days for one of her people to wonder if it was significant and pass it on, but then they had a second message from—believe it or not—the president of African Unity on Earth, and it tallied with the first one.*

*Go on,*
Ben said.

*A message from Rion Benjamin. Your brother Ben?*

Ben stopped walking.

*Yes.*

*All it said was: Nan and Ricky are missing. Crowder has them.*

*Shit!*

Ben clamped down on anything else he might have said and withdrew from the triad. Cara watched him intently, feeling mixed fear and anger coming off him in waves as his jaw clenched.

She'd only met Nan once, but she knew how much his formidable grandmother meant to Ben, and his nephew was only—she calculated quickly—eleven years old.

“I should have pulled them out of there. Should have known Crowder would try and use my family.”

“You warned them.”

“I should have insisted they all move to somewhere safe—though whether Nan could have pried Rion away from the farm is debatable. My brother can be—stubborn.” He ran his fingers through his hair, just starting to regrow after being shaved down to stubble. “Damn! I wanted to keep them out of it.”

*Ben, Cara?*
Cas was concerned.

*It's okay, Cas, we're still here
,* Cara said.
*Was there anything else in that message?*

*No. It was sent three days ago, though.*

*Thanks, Cas, we'll take it from here,*
Ben said.

Cara wasn't a slow walker, but she had to put in little hops and skips to keep up with Ben. He said nothing, but one look at his face told Cara everything she needed to know.

“First things first,” she said, slightly out of breath as she
labored to keep up and talk at the same time. “I'll try to contact Nan for you.”

“Makes sense. Now?”

She nodded. Ben's brother was a complete deadhead. Cara hadn't met him, but the impression she got from Ben was anything but favorable. They didn't seem to have much common ground, though Ben adored his nephews. Cara had met Ricky once, a bright boy with hints of undeveloped psi potential. He was still too young for an implant.

They stopped on the crest of the hill above the camp. In the distance
Solar Wind
hunched behind newly constructed risers, waiting for the influx of settlers. All around them the air was silent, not an insect call to be heard, which was unusual, since the bird-sized grub-eaters were rarely quiet and there was a type of burrowing beetle that rattled its ninth pair of legs against its carapace for echolocation whenever it surfaced.

Cara checked for crawling things and then sat down on a rock. “Anchor me.” She held out a hand, thumb uppermost, and he grasped it firmly. It wasn't at all the same kind of handclasp she'd been contemplating just a few minutes before. This was all business. As the two of them stilled, the insects broke into a cacophony of warbles and clicks.

She called up an image of Nan: elderly, but not weak; forceful, sometimes irascible, sometimes loving, always practical. Cara had liked Nan immensely on their first and only meeting.

She aimed a thought toward Chenon, seeking out just one mind out of hundreds of planet-bound psi-techs. She sensed a flicker of something familiar and thought she'd found Nan. It was the right pattern, but the mind was weak and confused, not at all how she recalled Ben's grandmother. She thought at first that she'd found the old lady sound asleep, but then realized she couldn't wake her.

“What's wrong?” Ben asked as Cara disengaged.

“She's sick, or drugged. Drugged I think. I got no clear focus.”

Ben swore. “Try again.”

She did, with the same result.

Ben released his grip on her hand and she could hardly bring herself to look at him. “You're going to Chenon.”

“Of course I'm going to Chenon.”

“It's a trap.”

“I know.”

“I'm coming with you.”

“No.”

“You need a Telepath.”

“I'll manage.”

“And a team.”

“I'm not dragging anyone else into this.”

“We'll see about that.” Cara skipped after him as he strode toward the
Solar Wind
.

T
HERE WAS NO WAY BEN WAS TAKING CARA, or anyone else, into a trap. They'd barely got out of the warehouse in one piece. Serafin might never recover fully. Max and Gen had almost been poisoned. Wenna might have lost an arm, if she hadn't already lost it on Hera-3, on his watch. Back on Olyanda he'd lost three of his team leaders. He had a piss-poor record for keeping those he cared about alive.

Trouble was, he knew any one of them would back his play if he called on them, and he knew that rescuing Nan might need a fully trained team. If he went in unprepared and undermanned he was likely to get himself killed without rescuing Nan and Ricky.

Though with him dead, Crowder had no reason to hold his family to ransom. It was almost a solution in itself.

“Are you even listening to me?” Cara snapped at him from the comms chair on
Solar Wind
's flight deck.

“What? Yes, I'm listening. I'm just not agreeing.”

“You'll get yourself killed and that won't help Nan and Ricky.”

Had she been listening in to his thoughts? Probably not, she just knew him well enough by now to guess what he was thinking. He shrugged. “I'm still not taking you. Crowder
knows your face. Knows you . . . mean something to me. You'd be his first target. Any of our psi-techs would be a target.”

“Then take a team Crowder doesn't know. Take Tengue and Gwala and some of their people. They get paid for the rough stuff.”

“I promised I wouldn't send them up against Alphacorp or the Trust.”

“Crowder's not the Trust. He's gone rogue. The Trust just doesn't know it yet.”

Ben set a course for Crossways, jumping into the Folds at the earliest opportunity and out at the latest to save flight time, popping back into the real world barely fifty clicks out from the station and earning an ear full of abuse from the traffic controller.

“Sorry, it won't happen again,” he said into the vox as Cara glared at him.

“See that it doesn't,” the controller said. “Me and the boys arranged a little party for the last hotshot who thought he could break the rules. He didn't walk so good after that. Makes us look bad, see, when ships collide. Space is kinda big, and Mr. Garrick figures it doesn't take too many brains to keep two ships apart, so if we get it wrong, we'll be busted to the maintenance bays, or worse. And there are some jobs on this station make the sanitation detail look glamorous.”

“I get the picture.”

“Good. Port 22 is open and waiting for you.”

“Thank you, Control.”

The crackle of static that followed sounded like a string of obscenities.

Ben nudged
Solar Wind
into the now-familiar Port 22 and docked, feeling the slight judder as she touched down and the docking clamps engaged.

Ben didn't need to meet Cara's gaze to know she was mad at him. Not that long ago she'd told him she needed some recovery time. Now he was offering it and she was mad at him.

“Can't win,” he muttered.

“What?”

“Forget it.”

Cara's face took on a momentary blankness, a dead giveaway when she concentrated really hard on some difficult
mind trick. In this case, he figured she was talking about him. Probably to Gen or Wenna. Damn, he wished he could tap in. He'd been at the back of the lineup when chance gave out Telepathy skills. He might be a Psi-1 Navigator, but he could barely throw a thought from here to the floor without another stronger Telepath to work through. Cara made it super easy for him, so easy he sometimes forgot that the skill was all hers. This time she kept him locked out. Conspiring.

Shit, he was getting as bad as Victor Lorient.

He powered down, completed
Solar Wind
's final checks and sat staring at the blank forward screen. Cara didn't move.

He sighed. “All right, I give in. You're right, it's not a solo job. But volunteers only.”

“Finally!”

“I get there in the end.”

She stood up. “I'll go and see if Tengue is bored with babysitting Blue Seven.”

“I need some thinking time. I'll catch up with you.”

She dropped a light kiss on top of his head. “I like it that you're not afraid to change your mind, Ben Benjamin.”

“Volunteers only.” Cara drew Gen to one side in Blue Seven. “Crowder's out for blood and knows Ben's coming. Even without Jussaro, Crowder knows Ben well enough.”

Gen knew about Jussaro since Max had been having daily lessons. “Right now I've got to think about more than myself, so I'm not volunteering.” Gen's belly was expanding rapidly, now a very obvious pregnancy. “And don't even think about asking Max.”

“It hadn't crossed my mind.”

“Liar!”

Cara shrugged. Max was a psi-tech Finder of lost things. Ben was going to need a good Finder if he was going to locate Nan and Ricky. A Psi-Mech would be an advantage, too, and a Telepath to keep everyone connected and working in gestalt.

“Come on, we can go over potential volunteers. I'll buy you a coffee,” Gen said. “That new place across the way is doing great business, especially since the alternative is Ada Levenson's bland brew.”

“Real coffee?”

“It had better be for the price they charge.”

Leaving the bustle of the building site behind, Cara followed Gen outside, past Hilde, one of Tengue's Blue Seven Security guards, and across the footbridge that spanned the transport tub channel. Three taxi tubs lined up in the pull-in, waiting for customers.

“Looks like we've arrived on the Crossways map,” Cara said. “The locals are already touting for business.”

“Tengue's very thorough,” Gen said. “He's vetted the companies and only two are allowed access to the bay.”

“I'm liking him already.”

Gen led the way into the busy little coffee shop, enterprisingly named Blue Mountain, and slipped into an empty booth. A real waitress followed them over and took their order. As she left, Cara activated the sound isolation baffle. The hum of conversation around them immediately stilled.

“Tengue's good at his job,” Gen said. “But running security might be a little tame for him.”

“Ben promised Tengue they wouldn't have to go up against the Trust or Alphacorp.”

“Crowder stepped outside the limits of the Trust when he tried to kill us all on Olyanda.”

“That's what I told Ben, but you know how stubborn he is. Thinks he has to protect the whole universe from harm. Counts every death as a debt he has to repay personally—as if it's his fault.”

“Are you saying that it's bad that he values the lives of his team?”

“Of course not. Hell, we're both here, aren't we? But he carries the dead around with him, like links in some personally forged chain, and it's weighing him down.”

Their coffee arrived and Gen flashed her credit chip. “And now it's his grandmother and his nephew in trouble, which makes it even more personal.”

Cara sipped her coffee, strong and black with a layer of cream on top and tasting every bit as good as it smelled. “You think Tengue will be up for it?”

“You wait here. I'll send him across.” Gen clipped a lid onto her coffee. “I'll take mine with me. You enjoy yours.” She stood as if to leave and then turned back. “I would come if it wasn't for, you know.” She patted her belly.

“I know.”

Cara sipped her coffee and waited for Tengue, nodding to the big, bronzed merc as he paused in the doorway and checked out the room. It looked habitual, never stepping into a place until you were sure you'd be likely to walk out again unscathed.

“How do you do it?” Cara asked him as he sat down.

“Do what?”

“Spend so much time in a combat zone without ending up jumpy as all hell with your nerves frayed to pieces.”

“How do you know what my nerves are like?”

“Empath.”

“Ah.”

“So?”

“Lack of imagination. I cultivate it. And I don't let myself get too close to anyone. Nothing personal. I look after my team like a good farmer looks after his prize dairy herd.”

“Is that what they are to you, cattle?”

“That's what I tell myself.”

“And does it work?”

“Mostly.”

That would never work for Ben. People were always people to him, and he had imagination by the bucket-load. Cara moved on to the business at hand. “Word is that you find working security a bit tame.”

“Is that what the word is?”

Cara raised her eyebrows.

“No one's taken a potshot at me in . . . days.” Tengue laughed. “Could be that I'm beginning to feel unloved.”

“I can remedy that.”

He smirked.

“Not in the love department,” she put in hurriedly. “Ben's got a job to do and could use backup.”

“And what would this job be?”

“An extraction. Old woman and a boy.”

“From?”

“Chenon.”

Tengue blew air past his teeth. “I didn't sign on to go up against the Trust.”

“Crowder's gone rogue, he just hasn't told the Trust yet. What he's doing, holding Ben's grandmother and nephew, is
illegal. He's got a squad of folks answering to him, but if the rest of the Trust found out he'd be answering questions faster than he could speak.”

“It's still Trust heartland.”

“Yes, it is. That's why Ben needs backup.”

Tengue nodded thoughtfully. “Could be I might find you a few volunteers.” He grinned.

Ben dismissed the skeleton crew aboard
Solar Wind
.

“Do you need me for anything else tonight?” Yan asked, the last to leave. “Dobson's doing the post-flight check. Ship'll be ready in six hours, tops. In the meantime I've got a date with Dido Kennedy.”

Ben smiled. “Dido Kennedy or her jump-drive project?”

Yan wiggled his hand. “Maybe a little of both.”

“Good for you. I'll stay until Dobson arrives.”

“I can be ready to leave for Chenon as soon as you give the word. Your family—”

“It's private business, Yan.”

“You're not taking off alone, are you?”

Ben squashed down irritation and answered Yan with a shake of the head. “Volunteers only.”

“This is me volunteering. You know there's a bunch of us only too happy to give Crowder a kicking if you just say the word.”

“I know, thanks.”

Ben raised the ramp and sealed the hatch behind Yan, then made his way to his cabin, yanked off his buddysuit and headed for the shower. He needed thinking time to plan the mission to Chenon.

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.