The Real Story: The Gap Into Conflict Read online

  It worked for a while. Out of the black, light came in bright flares, matter fire hitting rock; the rock went incandescent as it burst into its component particles; static sizzled across Bright Beauty’s scan; light collapsed to black again. Angus rode a meson torrent deeper into the belt and snatched his ship past obstacles that could have crushed her, and went on firing himself, madly throwing up scree like a screen against Starmaster’s guns.

  But the destroyer learned fast. She turned his own tactics against him. There was a lull in the fire—fifteen seconds, twenty, twenty-five—during which no attempt was made to hit him. Then a dead stone lump the size of a small space station hardly a thousand kilometers ahead took a shaft of incandescence through its center and broke apart so violently that chunks as big as ejection pods came at him like thunderbolts.

  His proximity alarms went wild, then dead as their circuits overloaded.

  In the sudden silence, Angus ducked, squirmed, twisted—and almost made it. Bright Beauty was agile, and he was desperate. At the last instant, however, one rock slapped her in the side and sent her tumbling like a derelict through the belt.

  The next collision was gentler, just a kiss that flattened out some of the gyration. He didn’t feel it. G and anoxia had stretched him too thin. He was unconscious. As far as he knew, he was still trying to scream.

  CHAPTER

  4

  Moments later, he came back to himself. Just in time: Bright Beauty was plunging toward the kind of collision that would crumple her like an empty can. Hardly aware yet of what he was doing, reacting by plain instinct and fear, he punched at his console, fought the spin, got his thrusters aimed for braking. Only a few hundred meters off an asteroid almost large enough for colonization, he wrestled his ship under control.

  Running on automatic pilot himself, still gasping for air and barely able to focus his eyes, he checked for damage. Bright Beauty had a cabin-size dent in her side; but her shields held, interior bulkheads held, preserving a fragile integrity. One part of her nose looked like it’d been hit by an impact-ram, and a number of sensors and sniffers were dead; but no structural harm had been done. She would still function. She could go someplace and get help—at the moment, he had no idea where, his brain was too fuzzy from oxygen starvation, but someplace, it was still possible, she could do it somehow.

  Entirely by accident, one of the cameras which had been scanning Bright Beauty’s hull gave him a glimpse of the UMCP ship.

  She was coming for him, coming fast.

  She had a straight shot at him. As soon as she fired, his whole life would be reduced to light and electrons.

  And there was nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t even play dead. That wouldn’t fool her. She’d seen him brake: she knew he was alive.

  The thought turned his guts to water. He didn’t want to die. Almost without realizing it, he hit his distress beacon. Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, you fornicating filthy bastards, don’t kill me, I surrender.

  Starmaster came ahead as if she wanted to eviscerate him at point-blank range; as if Captain Davies Hyland wanted to see Angus Thermopyle die with his own eyes.

  The terrible injustice of it made Angus burn to shoot first, to key targ and at least go out fighting, even though matter cannon fire couldn’t hurt the UMCP ship. But he didn’t do that. Fear was more imperative than hate. Raging like a maniac, he fed his transmitter all the gain it could handle and sent his distress call into the dark like a wail.

  His cameras gave him a perfect view as Starmaster altered course, turned in the direction of the asteroid—and broke in half.

  Broke in half.

  A blast like that: one of the drives must have blown up. Fire and metal sprayed without a sound into the belt. Out of the center of the explosion, Starmaster toppled as if she were felling toward the surface of the asteroid.

  Angus watched in complete astonishment as the ship crashed and died.

  Instead of gutting Starmaster, the fire went out almost immediately. That implied—He was too stupefied to realize what it implied. On automatic again, his hands fumbled across the console, activating short-range scanners, focusing cameras. He was trying to think. He should already be dead, fried in his g-seat. The UMCP ship had a straight shot at him. But he was still alive. Starmaster broke in half. The fire went out almost immediately.

  That implied—

  Oxygen.

  The fire went out because it didn’t get oxygen. But the ship was full of air. Angus understood fires in space: he knew Starmaster should have burned longer than that. Some of her interior bulkheads must be holding. Parts of her retained structural integrity.

  That, too, had significant implications. They eluded him, however. Bad air and the fundamental shock of his survival muddled his head. Ideas that should have been clear to him refused to come into focus.

  Then he got it.

  If parts of Starmaster retained integrity, then some of her people might have been protected or shielded. There might be survivors.

  There were survivors. When he pulled his eyes down from the screen where his cameras reported what they could see, down to his scan displays and readouts, he discovered that his instruments registered life. Three or four people were still alive.

  No, not three. Definitely four.

  Still stunned by what had happened, and hardly able to breathe because Bright Beauty’s atmosphere had deteriorated considerably during the past few minutes, Angus struggled to think.

  He never considered trying to rescue the survivors. Even with all his wits about him, he would have dismissed that idea. Those people were cops; his enemies. And he didn’t bother to wonder what had happened, how Starmaster had died. He would probably never know the answer to that question. He would probably never care. His thoughts were more basic:

  Air.

  Water.

  Food.

  And he thought, Bastards! If he went down there, one of the survivors might shoot him. He would have to wait here until they were dead.

  But he didn’t know how badly they were hurt. If they were hurt at all. They might be able to outlast him. Without adequate air or water or food, he might collapse long before they did.

  Caught between need and cowardice, he was paralyzed. Sucking sweat off his upper lip, he stared at Starmasters image on his screen and wrestled with his fear.

  Then he thought about what had been done to him.

  His heart began to swell with old rage, familiar and malign. The strength which had kept him alive so long, against such odds, came back to him. Snarling curses as fiercely as he could with the little oxygen the rank atmosphere provided, he shifted Bright Beauty into landing attitude and started her moving.

  While he was still negotiating a touchdown, scan informed him that one set of life-signs had stopped.

  Good. Only three left.

  Gently he set Bright Beauty on her struts beside the UMCP ship. Leaving his g-seat, he bobbed like a balloon against the asteroid’s gravity toward her lockers.

  Once he’d donned his EVA suit and clamped the faceplate shut, he spent a minute simply breathing the sweet air from the tanks. But he couldn’t afford to delay. The remaining survivors might be aware of him. They might be trying to train Starmaster’s guns on him right now.

  He took an impact rifle with him, a miner’s weapon because it could clear rockfalls and powder stone; in a pinch it could be used to buckle steel plate. He was no longer swearing: he was too scared to swear. The UMCP ship terrified him. The survivors terrified him. And EVA always terrified him. But he thought about air and revenge, and went to get them.

  Cycling through the airlocks, he eased himself onto the surface of the asteroid.

  Out here, the only light was the distant glitter of the starfield. Without the enhanced sensitivity of his cameras to help him, he could only see Starmaster as a silhouette, blacker than space. She looked huge and treacherous, riddled with secrets. Playing a beam along her sides helped put her in perspective; but that small ligh
t couldn’t muffle the way his air tanks hissed in his ears, sounding so loud against the impenetrable silence of the belt that it seemed to mark him like a beacon for all his enemies. He loathed EVA because the sound of his own breathing made him feel puny and vulnerable. Now air and food and water didn’t matter to him anymore. He thought he could live without them somehow. It was only rage that kept him going.

  Bright Beauty had been hurt. She would never be the same again.

  Starmaster’s survivors were going to pay for that. The people who had sent her out against him were going to pay.

  Sweating hate, he crossed to the UMCP ship.

  Without much trouble, he found an airlock in the intact part of the ship. As soon as he’d entered the lock and closed it behind him, he began to recover. The ship’s air pumping into the lock muted the hiss of his tanks. Her survivors might be waiting to ambush him as soon as he came out of the lock—but now at least he was no longer outside, exposed. And inside his rifle would be a devastating weapon.

  As the lock cycled open, he ducked to the side, pressed himself against the wall: an instinctive precaution.

  His instincts were good. A man stood waiting for him.

  At first glance, the man looked all right. His silver hair was rumpled, but that only increased his appearance of eagle authority. Captain’s bars marked the shoulders of his tunic. In one fist he held a beam gun.

  Angus nearly cried out, “Don’t shoot!” even though his suit’s transmitter was switched off and his voice would have been inaudible.

  “I’m Captain Davies Hyland,” the man said. “Angus Thermopyle, you’re under arrest.” Through the suit’s receiver, his confidence sounded insane, detached from reality. “We’re going to commandeer your ship.”

  His eyes hadn’t reacted to Angus’ movement. He wasn’t looking at Angus now. His gun was aimed at the back of the lock.

  The parbroiled skin around his eyes betrayed what had happened to him.

  Flash-blinded in the crash.

  In spite of that, he was trying to bluff—

  Commandeer my ship? My SHIP?

  Cackling hideously behind his faceplate, Angus fired. The impact rifle spattered a fine spray of blood thirty meters down the corridor.

  Then he hastened to apologize. I’m sorry, Captain Davies Hyland, he said in gleeful courtesy. You can’t have my ship.

  There were a few pieces of the captain’s body left on the floor. Angus kicked them out of his way and went looking for the other two survivors. He was starting to feel much better.

  The bridge was in this part of Starmaster. He went there first—carefully, surveying each corner and passage with his rifle before he risked it, because he had no way to find those two people except by hunting them down. His caution was wasted, however: he didn’t see anyone until he reached the bridge. And there the man hunched over the helm console was in no condition to threaten anyone. He was dying where he sat—internal bleeding, Angus guessed. Nothing to worry about.

  Angus pushed the man out of his g-seat. New pain made the man cry out; but it also brought his eyes into focus, which was what Angus wanted. Laughing inside his suit, he blasted the man to pulp and splinters, a splash and smear of blood on the floor.

  One more to go. Then air filters. Food lockers. A line to the water tanks. And everything else worth taking.

  The ship’s datacore would have been worth taking, of course. But one look at the bridge computer told him the datacore had already been destructed. Staunch Captain Davies Hyland had probably taken care of that automatically, while his ship was still falling toward the asteroid. So that his precious codes and contacts and orders and even specs wouldn’t survive to be used against his masters.

  Fuck Captain Davies Hyland, Angus thought. Fuck him everywhere. He’s got enough holes in him for that.

  Cheered by this observation, Angus pushed a body out of his way and sat down at the scan station. The secondary systems which ran the locks were still operating; that implied parts of the ship still had a bit of juice. This console was one of them. Refocusing short-range scan inward, he used it to locate the last survivor.

  There: in a room the scan computer identified as the auxiliary bridge.

  That made him snarl under his breath. From the auxiliary bridge, it might still be possible to fire on Bright Beauty.

  Hurrying now because he knew where his prey was and didn’t need caution, he went to finish off the last of Starmaster’s crew.

  Under the circumstances, his concern for his ship was greater than his desire to inflict pain. He broke into the auxiliary bridge fast with his rifle ready, intending to shoot first and think later.

  Morn Hyland stopped him without lifting a finger; without threatening Bright Beauty; without so much as reacting to his entrance. Instead, she stared through him with stark, blank horror on her face, as if she could see something so ghastly that it blinded her, making him invisible to her.

  In the first few minutes, he didn’t even notice his own surprise at finding a woman when he was expecting a man.

  Although he knew there was no one else alive on the ship, her fixed stare had the power to turn him around in an effort to see what had appalled her.

  Nothing. Of course. She was the only one here. There weren’t even any bodies. She’d come through the explosion and the crash without having to watch any of her crewmates die.

  Something like a worm of suspicion crawled through Angus Thermopyle’s belly. He tightened his grip on his rifle as he confronted her again.

  Apparently she still couldn’t see him. Her eyes remained nailed to her personal horror, ignoring his movements as if he were too insubstantial to impinge on her vision. She was in shock. If he didn’t do anything to help her, she might stay that way for hours. Until something inside her started to heal. Or until she slipped over into madness.

  He had no intention whatsoever of helping her.

  But then she spoke. In a sore whisper, as if her voice were worn out from screaming, she said, “Let me die.”

  Inside his suit, Angus had begun to sweat again.

  “I don’t want help. Let me die. Go away.”

  He stared at her, studied her. He didn’t know it, but his expression resembled hers. Despite its distress, her face had lines that reminded him of Captain Davies Hyland. And the badge on her shipsuit said “Ensign M. Hyland.” The captain’s daughter? That was quite possible. Ships were often crewed by families. Especially in organizations like the UMCP. Where loyalty was the only thing more important than power and order, muscle and stability, the two essentials of civilization and money. But she looked too young to be a veteran. Her first mission?

  “Go away.”

  What did she see that made her want to die?

  Abruptly he keyed his suit’s mike. “Why?” Through the speaker, his voice was harsh, like the demanding metal noise of ships in collision. “What did you do to them?”

  Without warning, she gripped the sides of her head and began to wail; a thin, weak keening.

  “Stop that,” he barked. “Tell me what you did to them. If you don’t, I’ll be glad to beat it out of you.”

  Her wail cracked, hurt her throat, and scaled higher.

  “Shut up!” He brandished his rifle. “They’re all dead. Nobody can hear you. I shot your father myself. Shut up.”

  That made her look at him. Some kind of recognition ate into her like acid. For part of a second, she gave him a flare of straight, absolute anguish.

  “He survived? He was alive?”

  Angus nodded. “Until I blew him apart.”

  During the space between one heartbeat and the next, she seemed to collapse inward like the core of a fusion reactor, compressing herself for an explosion. Then she flung herself out of her g-seat, clawing at his faceplate.

  With her bare hands, she ripped and beat at him, trying to reach him through the suit. Her wail became a screech, as wild as the cry of a mad thing.

  At that moment, for no clear or even consciou
s reason, he took his first step away from himself, his first step along the course which led to his real doom.

  He didn’t pity her. He didn’t pity anybody: any man or woman weak enough to be pitied was weak enough to be taken advantage of. He wasn’t ashamed of having killed her father. Captain Davies fornicating Hyland had damaged Bright Beauty; he deserved worse than he got. And Angus Thermopyle certainly had no intention of rescuing the captain’s daughter. What use could he possibly get out of a madwoman? Never mind the fact that she was UMCP, muscle for all the worlds which had ever despised him, in addition to being a witness to what he had done to that mining camp—a danger to him as long as she lived.

  And yet he didn’t shoot her.

  Maybe he was simply tired of being alone. Maybe on some level he’d begun to notice that behind her fierce distress she was obviously a woman. Maybe his desire to know what had happened to Starmaster was stronger than he realized. Or maybe she presented possibilities of revenge which he hadn’t yet had a chance to appreciate.

  Whatever the reason, when she attacked him he actually dropped his rifle.

  For a moment, he grappled with her, fought to pin her arms. But she was too crazy and frantic for that; so he drew back one heavy fist and clubbed her to the floor.

  She whimpered, twisted, tried to squirm away from the pain—and then lay still, breathing in a graceless rasp like the sound of his own respiration inside his suit.

  Hitting her—that kind of violence—was so seductive that he wanted to do it again. He wanted to give her ribs a kick and see what would happen. He restrained himself, however. Unexpectedly, he found he had one too many things to worry about. Filters. Supplies. Loot. And her.

  And there was always the chance that some other ship was near enough to respond to the distress call he had sent out. Starmaster herself may have sent out a distress call. If he were caught here, with a broken UMCP ship to explain, and dead miners not very far away—