Chaos and Order: The Gap Into Madness Page 6

  Her preparations and those extra k proved critical. When Thanatos Minor exploded, Soar had every gun trained, not on Trumpet, but on the dark rock; had every force screen and mass deflector on that side at full power. And Sorus had reoriented her ship to present the stone barrage with the smallest possible profile.

  Soar endured the mad, hurtling onslaught of debris by blasting stone to powder before it hit; by deflecting some impacts and absorbing others. The shock wave tossed her toward oblivion as if she’d received a direct hit from Calm Horizons’ super-light proton cannon; but then the concussion ran on past her, leaving her battered and reeling, but whole.

  And Calm Horizons survived in much the same way. The warship’s profile was larger, of course. On the other hand, she was considerably farther from the center of the blast. And her guns—not to mention her targ—were superior to Soar’s: able to destroy more of the careening rock before it hit.

  After the explosion, Thanatos Minor was gone.

  Only two ships remained—the two which had received Milos Taverner’s warning. Every other vessel in this quadrant of space had been torn apart and scattered along the subatomic winds of the dark. Soar’s receivers could pick up the blind fallout of the blast, the enharmonic squalling of the debris, the thunderous distortion of the aftershock, but no voices.

  Sorus clutched at the arms of her g-seat, fighting acceleration stress and nausea. The wave front had flung her against her restraints as easily as if she were an empty shipsuit: she felt like she’d been hit with a stun-prod. She wasn’t young anymore, couldn’t suffer this kind of abuse without paying for it. The clamor of shouts and the yowl of klaxons across the bridge told her that she was still alive, that her ship was still alive—but not for how long.

  A blast like that could have broken Soar’s back, or torn the ship’s core open to hard vacuum; could have snapped conduits like twigs, cracked drive housings, crumpled vanes and antennae, ruptured fuel cells—

  The displays in front of her had gone crazy or blind; g pulled at her stomach, partly because of the blast, partly because she’d shut down internal spin to improve Soar’s maneuverability. Despite the racket of pain in her head, the pressure like hemorrhage in her lungs, she hauled herself upright by main strength and struggled to clear her vision.

  “Damage report!” she barked through the clamor. “Ship’s status!”

  Her command seemed to open a space for itself through the noise and confusion. “We’ve been hit!” her data first shouted back, “three times, no, four!” giving her information as fast as it came to his readouts. “Deflectors and screens couldn’t hold.

  “One hit along the prow, glancing blow, no penetration, no structural damage. One five-meter dent in the outer hull amidships, leaks at the seams, automatic systems have it under control,” pumping plexulose plasma sealant into the gap between the hulls. “One took out a midship deflector vane.”

  “Captain!” called the communications first. “Calm Horizons wants—”

  Sorus cut off the interruption with a slash of her hand. She didn’t want to hear anything else until she knew the condition of her ship.

  The data first hadn’t stopped. “—must be why the last one hit so hard. Breached a cargo bay. Interior bulkheads show green, no leakage. But we can’t seal a hole that size. Damn rock’s still in there, along with what’s left of the cargo.”

  Sorus snatched a breath into her sore lungs. “Injury report.”

  The data first hit more keys. “Four so far, five, six—that’s all. Impact stress, mostly—contusions, breaks, whiplash. No casualties.”

  “Captain—” communications demanded again.

  “I’m fucking blind,” the scan first protested to no one in particular. “Can’t see a fucking thing.” She flapped her hands as if she were trying to clear away smoke. “All this fucking distortion!”

  Sorus ignored them both; she ignored Milos Taverner’s bulk almost directly in front of her. “Helm?”

  The man at the helm station shrugged. “We’re still riding blast inertia. Away from Thanatos Minor. If there’s anything left of it. But I can’t tell you where we actually are until we get scan back.”

  “Or who else survived,” scan put in harshly.

  Sorus felt that fear herself—the cold, visceral dread of running blind down the black gullet of the void—but there was nothing she could do about it.

  Another voice cut at her attention.

  “Captain. Calm Horizons must be answered. It is imperative.”

  That was the other half-mutated human, Marc Vestabule. He stood at the communications station. Like Milos Taverner in front of Sorus, he’d planted himself there by clamping his hands to the sides of the board; he seemed immune to the receding g of the concussion, immovable. Before the blast had reduced reception to gibberish, he’d been talking to Calm Horizons, presumably giving the Amnion warship the same information Milos Taverner had given her—and asking the same questions.

  “Then do it,” she snapped back at him. “Just don’t bother me.”

  Apparently calm, Marc Vestabule released one hand to take a receiver from the communications board and jack it into his ear. Then he accepted a pickup from the communications first. At once—but without any discernible urgency—he began to make alien noises into the pickup.

  That was the thing Sorus Chatelaine distrusted or loathed or feared most about the Amnion. None of them ever showed any urgency; any ordinary mortal dread or desperation. The pilot and guard which had accompanied Vestabule and Taverner aboard the shuttle still stood by the bridge doors, bracing themselves there as quietly as if nothing had happened. As for Taverner himself—

  In almost every way, he looked as human as she was. Perhaps more so: his pudgy face and besmirched scalp, his nic-stained fingers and pallid skin, conveyed an impression of flaws, frailties. Only anger could have given his face dignity. On his features any other emotion would have looked like self-pity.

  Nevertheless she knew that he was an Amnioni—as single-minded and unshakable as Marc Vestabule; as the shuttle’s pilot and guard; as every member of the crew which served Calm Horizons. The signs were unmistakable.

  His eyes betrayed the working of the mutagens which had taken away his identity. They were an acrid yellow color, lidless, with deformed irises like slits; they made his physical softness, and his unnatural calm seem somehow demonic, like a glimpse of damnation. Genetic transformation had altered everything about him except his appearance: rearranged his DNA strings, restructured the fundamental, definitive encryption of his nucleotides, until only a detached and sometimes imprecise memory-pool remained of the former deputy chief of Com-Mine Station Security.

  Sorus was familiar with the process. She’d known Marc Vestabule for years.

  Irritated at the way Taverner watched her as if nothing she did could surprise him, she snapped past him, “Scan, I want a report!”

  “I told you, Captain, I’m blind,” the scan first answered defensively. “There’s too much fucking distortion all across the spectrum, the instruments can’t—”

  “Then fix it,” Sorus retorted. “Filter it somehow. Tell the computer what happened so it can compensate. I want to know what’s out there.”

  “Captain.” Vestabule turned his bifurcated gaze at her, one eye human, the other Amnion. “Calm Horizons reports no other surviving vessels. The planetoid Thanatos Minor no longer exists. You are in no danger. Distortion should recede to the tolerances of your equipment in four minutes. Calm Horizons has identified your position. Coordinates will be transmitted to your helm.”

  Sorus nodded sharply. The helm and communications officers hit keys to route information between their stations.

  “More data follows when you are ready to receive it,” Vestabule added.

  “Not yet,” she told him. “I’ve got other priorities.

  “Data, give me damage assessment on that holed cargo bay. And a repair estimate for the deflector vane.”

  With her thumb, sh
e punched open a ship-wide intercom channel. “All hands secure for g. I’m going to reengage internal spin. Get to sickbay if you need it. The rest of us have work to do. Damage control says we’re still true, but I don’t trust it. We were hit too hard. Report anything that makes you think we’ve got displacement.”

  Glaring back at Taverner’s soft calm, Sorus thumbed off the intercom and began to run commands on her board.

  Before she could activate internal spin, Marc Vestabule said, “Haste is required, Captain Chatelaine.” He sounded as inexorable as an iron bar.

  Pain made her feel her years—and the pull of time made her angry. “Haste for what?” she retorted. “Where are we going? You just told me everybody else is dead. Gone, blown to scrap.” The thought left a cold place in the pit of her stomach. Even the Bill was gone. He’d been as untrustworthy as any man she’d ever known, but he’d met some of her needs and supplied others—sometimes without knowing it. She couldn’t imagine how she would replace him. Without what he’d given her, how would she bear her indentured servitude to the Amnion? “If we’re in no danger, what’s the hurry?”

  “Decisions have been made,” Vestabule replied in a tone like rust. “Action must be taken. Calm Horizons instructs acceleration along an interception course. The proximity of vessels will facilitate preparation.”

  Perhaps he felt the urgency of events after all: as he relayed Calm Horizons’ orders, he sounded more inhuman than usual.

  Sorus faced, him while apprehension throbbed in her temples and the aftereffects of g-stress ached in her nerves. Decisions? Action? Maybe as many as ten thousand people just died here. How much more action do you need?

  “If you want me to take this seriously,” she said through her teeth, “you’d better explain it.”

  Vestabule appeared to consult the alien coding of his genes for a moment before he answered, “Scan data suggests that Trumpet was not destroyed.”

  Incuriously Taverner turned his head to look at his fellow Amnioni.

  Hunched over her readouts, the scan first muttered, “I’m starting to get something. One ship—yes, that’s Calm Horizons. Can’t be sure of anything else yet.”

  Sorus swallowed a curse. She believed Vestabule the instant he spoke: the Amnion didn’t often make mistakes in matters of factual accuracy. But if Trumpet was still alive somewhere, still out there with Morn and Davies Hyland, Angus Thermopyle and Nick Succorso, aboard—

  Sick with premonitions, as if she knew what was coming, she drawled sourly, “But you told me we’re the only ships here. ‘No other, surviving vessels,’ you said. So if Trumpet isn’t here and wasn’t destroyed—”

  She let the implication hang.

  “As the wave front struck,” Vestabule said, “Calm Horizons detected the emissions of Trumpet’s gap drive.”

  “So she’s gone,” Sorus cut in harshly. “You lost her. All this plotting and maneuvering, all this destruction, and you lost her.” She made no effort to contain her anger. She knew from experience that the Amnion didn’t understand such emotions—and didn’t fear them. “Billingate and all those ships, destroyed for nothing, wasted. I thought you didn’t like waste.

  “Goddamn it, didn’t you tell Calm Horizons who was aboard that ship? Didn’t you tell them what Angus Thermopyle is—what he came here to do? Why did they let Trumpet get away? Why didn’t they use that damn cannon—cut their losses, solve this problem once and for all? Don’t you understand how dangerous those people are?”

  Because she knew what was coming, she struggled against it. “Angus Thermopyle is a cyborg. The cops sent him to destroy Billingate. That’s bad enough—letting him get away is bad enough. But there’s worse.

  “Nick Succorso’s priority-codes didn’t work on Captain’s Fancy. Haven’t you figured out yet what that means?”

  “What does it mean, Captain Chatelaine?” Taverner asked steadily.

  Sorus kept her glare on Marc Vestabule. She’d known him longer, distrusted him less; she feared that if she looked at Taverner, she might not be able to control her desire to punch in his fat face.

  “It means one of two things.

  “Either,” she articulated harshly, holding up one finger like an accusation, “those codes were never good in the first place. Morn Hyland and Nick Succorso planned the whole thing together, carried it out together. Their visit to Enablement was a trick, a ruse—probably one of Hashi Lebwohl’s covert operations. They got something from you, learned something, set you up for something, I don’t know what it was. All I know is, it worked. It paralyzed you long enough to let them get away.

  “Or”—she raised a second finger beside the first—“Hyland told Succorso she’d given you his priority-codes before he turned her over to you. So he had time to rewrite them. But that still means Hyland and Succorso must be working together. Why else would she let him in on a secret like that, when he was about to sacrifice her? And why else is she still human, if she didn’t get some kind of immunity drug from him?”

  Now Sorus began to see what lay behind Nick Succorso’s rumor that she herself had access to such a drug. If Billingate hadn’t been destroyed, neither the Bill nor anyone else would have left her alone—or let her live. The consequences of Nick’s lie would have driven her out into space, where he could attack her.

  “So the whole thing was still a ruse,” she concluded. “I don’t know what they were trying to get from you, but they as sure as hell got away with it.

  “What possessed Calm Horizons to let them do that? Why didn’t she blast Trumpet while she had the chance?”

  Milos Taverner confronted her now as if he and she were alone on the bridge. The force of his attention seemed to pull her eyes to his. “You ask an important question, Captain Chatelaine.” His vocal cords, less mutated than Vestabule’s, nonetheless made his voice sound alien: more spectral than human. “It suggests another, which is for you to answer.

  “When the ruse was revealed—when Captain’s Fancy began to act contrary to Amnion instructions—why did you not ‘blast’ the vessel? It was within your power to spare Tranquil Hegemony, yet you did not do so. You question our inaction. Will we not also question yours?”

  Sorus felt the threat: it was palpable and ominous, like static building in the air. Abruptly she let go of her anger. She couldn’t afford it here. Instead she hid her fear behind a mask of sardonic confidence—the mask she’d always worn when she was with the Bill.

  Covering herself while she marshaled her resources, she dropped her gaze to her board and completed the sequence of commands that reengaged internal spin. At once the almost subliminal whine of servos and motors filled the bridge as the floor eased into motion under her. As smooth as oil, Soar began to generate centrifugal inertia. A familiar sense of her own weight settled in her muscles. Both Vestabule and Taverner were able to relax their clamped postures.

  “All green,” data reported. “Sensors aren’t picking up any rubs or vibrations. Looks like we’re spinning true.”

  “Confirmation?” Sorus asked scan.

  “No,” the scan first said. “Not yet. I’m sure we’re the only ships here. That whole fucking rock is gone, and everything else with it. But I can’t see far enough yet to get an exact fix on anything. We might have instrument tremor, or we might not.”

  Sorus kept her relief to herself. With a trenchant snort which was as close as she could come to outright mockery, she answered Taverner, “I didn’t have a choice. You know that. I couldn’t attack Captain’s Fancy because I was busy rescuing you.

  “I hit her once, hard enough to be sure she wasn’t going to live much longer. After that I had my hands full trying to take hold of your shuttle without reducing you to so much g-flattened meat. I had to grab you carefully. If I hadn’t done that—or if I’d left you to concentrate on Captain’s Fancy—you would probably be dead right now.”

  Smiling into his eyes, she thought, Argue with that and be damned.

  “Precisely, Captain Chatelaine.” T
averner retained enough of his human resources to smile back. “You comprehend the essential concept. Confronted with two conflicting requirements, you found that one outweighed the other, despite the fact that both tended toward consequences which were uncertain. Perhaps we”—he made a stilted gesture that included Vestabule, the shuttle pilot, and the guard—“would have died. Perhaps not. Perhaps Captain’s Fancy would fail to inflict serious damage on Tranquil Hegemony. Again, perhaps not. It is at the intersection of perhaps and perhaps not that decisiveness exercises itself. You chose rightly to rescue us. Was it not conceivable that Tranquil Hegemony might successfully defend herself?

  “Calm Horizons chose not to fire on Trumpet because it was conceivable that Trumpet might be captured. Perhaps the destruction of Thanatos Minor would fail altogether. Perhaps it would be delayed. Perhaps Trumpet would come within range of a laser which would cripple her drives without killing the humans aboard. Confronted with conflicting requirements—to capture Trumpet and to prevent her escape—Calm Horizons found that one outweighed the other. To capture Trumpet would prevent her escape, but to prevent her escape might preclude her capture.”

  “The Amnion understand,” Marc Vestabule inserted in a crusted tone, “that what you name ‘a ruse’ has been practiced against us. Indeed, events suggest that humans have dealt falsely with us in several ways, or in one way with several implications. Milos Taverner has spoken of his perception that the actions of this ‘cyborg’ were directed against us as well as against Billingate in ways which we do not yet comprehend.”

  His stance conveyed no impatience, no tension; but his human eye blinked frantically, as if the last of his human emotions had no other outlet.

  “Yet the fact that a ruse was at work has been known to us from the first. On a previous occasion prior to his union with the Amnion, Milos Taverner informed us of Captain Nick Succorso’s false dealings on behalf of the United Mining Companies Police. He informed us of Morn Hyland’s identity as a United Mining Companies Police ensign. For that reason we sought to retain her body. The tissues of a UMCP ensign would have yielded much.