The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (63 page)

She met
his flaring gaze and held it. Despite her years of service to the Amnion and
her many visits to Billingate, she’d never before done what she was doing to
him. Nevertheless she’d witnessed enough brutality, experienced enough, to
foresee his argument — and prepare for it.

“All
right,” she sighed as if she were relenting. From another pocket she withdrew a
second vial. “Six more hours.” She wanted him scared, even terrified — not
overwhelmed. “But that’s as far as I go. If I don’t have what I want in twelve
hours, you’re on your own.”

He was
a kid: twelve hours might seem like a long time.

His
features twisted on the verge of tears; but she waited until she heard him
breathe like a whimper, “AH right.” Then she told Taverner to let him go.

The instant
Ciro was released, he snatched the vials from her and fought one of them open,
fumbling to get a capsule into his mouth before his ten minutes ran out.

Sorus
Chatelaine knew exactly how he felt.

 _

 _

A few minutes later her
command third took Ciro off the ship. His orders were to deliver the boy to
Chief Retledge; explain that Ciro had been found lost or snooping near
Soar
,
and was being delivered to Security in order to avoid trouble with Captain
Succorso; then return for an immediate departure.

When
the outer lock had closed behind them, Sorus faced Taverner and demanded, “Good
enough?”

Taverner’s
eyeshades made him seem more human, but they had no more expression than his
alien gaze. Instead of answering her question, he asked one of his own.

“Do you
believe that this ploy will succeed?” He didn’t stress the word “believe”:
their earlier conversation stressed it for him.

She
snorted angrily. “Maybe you’ve forgotten what human fear looks like. I haven’t.
That boy is
afraid.
He’ll do what I told him.”

She was
sure. Men like Succorso didn’t inspire the kind of loyalty that would lead Ciro
to sacrifice himself.

“But
that doesn’t mean I think it’ll work,” she went on. “It might — or it might
not. If he’s scared enough, he might give himself away. What I ‘believe’,” she
sneered, “is that it’s worth trying.”

Taverner’s
pause might have been the Amnion equivalent of a shrug. Then, while they were
alone in the airlock, and no one else could hear him, he announced flatly, “This
installation must be destroyed.”

She’d
seen too many installations destroyed recently; too many lives lost. Despair
filled her throat as she retorted, “Somehow I knew you were going to say that.”

Taverner
was insistent. “The knowledge which Captain Succorso seeks must die here. This
installation must be destroyed.”

Pain
and darkness made her savage. Turning, she thumbed the control panel to open
the inner doors. “That’s one of the things a super-light proton cannon is good
for.”

As soon
as the lock hummed aside, she pushed herself into motion, nearly bounding along
the corridor in an attempt to put as much distance as possible between herself
and the Amnioni who’d been assigned to haunt her.

MIKKA

S
he couldn’t remain where she was; not now; not like this. Nick had
told her to stay on watch outside the lab where he and Vector were presumably
working — or where Vector worked while he watched — but she couldn’t do it.

He was
scheming: the signs were unmistakable. His efforts to keep the people aboard
Trumpet
secret, like his unexpected decision to separate Sib, Ciro, and her made no
obvious sense. They must be part of some plot.

Whatever
he was plotting, it was going to hurt — her, or someone she cared about. She
knew Nick well enough to recognise the malign exhilaration in his eyes.

The thought
left her sick with dread and anger. She absolutely could not remain standing
here indefinitely, useless, while harm moved against her brother and the few
people she wanted to call her friends.

Regardless
of the price Morn and Davies might pay later for her disobedience, she nodded
to the guard Retledge had assigned to watch with her, told him that she’d
thought of a few things Sib and Ciro needed to include on their req lists, and
walked away from the locked door.

The man
didn’t object or follow. She was secondary: what happened in that lab was his
primary responsibility. And Beckmann’s installation had plenty of other guards
to make sure she didn’t cause trouble.

In
fact, she relied on encountering any number of guards. She’d never been here
before, didn’t know her way around. She would have to ask directions. And she
didn’t want anything she did to appear even remotely furtive. If or when Nick
challenged her, she wanted to be able to name witnesses who could confirm what
she told him.

Movement
helped: acting on her own decisions helped. Her heart seemed to settle in her
chest as she walked. At first she simply retraced her approach to the room
where Vector worked. But as soon as she reached one of the Lab’s main hallways,
she began scanning for Security.

Techs
and researchers in labsuits moved up and down the hall — so many of them that
she suspected the installation’s complex labs and experiments had reached a
shift change. How many people lived here? She didn’t know. This place was big;
but still relatively small compared with shipyards like Billingate. Ordinary
piracy attracted more illegals, if only because stealing was so much easier
than the kind of work Beckmann carried on.

In five
minutes she spotted a guard ahead of her, moving away. She strode after him.

He
walked as if he were looking for someone. When she touched his arm to get his
attention, he turned sharply and glared at her as if she’d interrupted
something important.

She
disliked him immediately. For some reason his tension sent anxiety crawling
along her nerves like skinworms.

Nevertheless
she made a point of noting the name on his Security id badge: “Klimpt.”
Witnesses with names were more useful than those without.

“Excuse
me,” she answered his glare. “I’m Mikka Vasaczk. Off
Trumpet
. I’m trying
to find my brother. Ciro.”

Like
Nick, she’d called her brother “Pup” ever since he’d joined
Captain’s Fancy
.
But in the past few days that nickname had begun to pain her. Ciro deserved
better.

The
guard looked away, ran his eyes along the hallway, then faced her again, making
no particular effort to be polite.

“Who?”

Under
her bandage, Mikka’s face clenched into its familiar scowl, but she kept her
tone neutral. “Captain Succorso referred to him as ‘Pup.’ He has orders to req
supplies from wherever you keep your food stores. I need to talk to him.”

Klimpt’s
glare sharpened. Bending toward her aggressively, he demanded, “Why?”

She
shrugged to show how little she feared his hostility. “We need some things Ciro
might not know about. I want to be sure he puts them on his list.”

The
guard’s belligerence receded, and a harried expression took its place. Wary of
being overheard, he muttered quietly, “Then you can help me. The little shit
wandered off somewhere. We’re supposed to find him.”

Mikka
felt her heart stumble. She wanted to hit Klimpt for calling her brother a “little
shit.” At the same time she wanted to tear her hair, yell, go running in all
directions.
Wandered off?
Ciro? When he was scared for his life — and
knew even less than she did about what was going on?

But
panic was useless; as useless as hitting the guard. With an effort, she kept
herself under control.

“Nice
work,” she snarled. Now she knew where Klimpt’s hostility came from. “How did
you let that happen?”

“I didn’t
let
it,” he retorted defensively. “It just did.”

She
started to say, Where have you looked? but caught herself. That wouldn’t help.
She didn’t know the Lab: she would only slow Klimpt by expecting him to account
for himself. Instead she asked, “Have you checked with Sib? Sib Mackern?”

Klimpt
shook his head.

“Tell
me how to find him. I’ll talk to him while you go on looking. If he knows where
Ciro is, I’ll contact Security.”

The
guard accepted her offer with a hint of gratitude. The more people who hunted
for Ciro, the sooner he would be found. And the sooner he was found, the better
Klimpt’s chances of staying out of serious trouble. He pointed Mikka back the
way she’d come, rattled off a quick series of directions, then turned to
continue along the hall.

Where
are you, Ciro? What has Nick done to you?

She was
headed for General Stores. Concentrating hard to hold Klimpt’s instructions in
the front of her mind so that she wouldn’t make a mistake — and wouldn’t panic
— she moved as fast as she could without running into the researchers and
techs, or causing some other kind of commotion.

What
had Nick done to her brother?

She was
concentrating hard: too hard. For a moment she didn’t notice that one of the
rooms she passed resembled a station transit lounge. Twenty or thirty chairs measured
the floor; data terminals stood around the walls at intervals; a series of
information screens depended from the ceiling.

Mikka
stopped. What use did the Lab have for a transit lounge?

None
that she could think of.

The
room was empty, so she entered to look at the screens.

As soon
as she saw what they displayed, she understood. Not a transit lounge: more like
an observation deck. Two of the screens gave what appeared to be progress
reports on various experiments. One showed several researchers hunched over a
piece of equipment she didn’t recognise. Another offered a lecture of some
kind: the man at the podium droned on as if he knew no one was listening. From
this room spectators could watch experiments, check the results of someone else’s
work, or hear abstruse topics explained.

Where
was Ciro? What had Nick done?

Mikka
was about to leave when one more screen caught her eye. It displayed the
installation’s dock status — showed which berths were in use, by which ships.

Three
of them she didn’t know: they may have belonged to the Lab itself. One was
Trumpet
,
numbers and blips winking to indicate that the ship was active.

One was
Soar
.

God
damn
it!

God
damn
you,
you son of a bitch!

So that
was what Nick was up to. By pure intuition and hard experience, she knew the
answer.
Soar
was in: nothing else mattered. Somehow Nick had just
sacrificed Ciro as a pawn in his deranged quest for revenge on Sorus
Chatelaine.

Bounding
forward as fast as the asteroid’s g allowed, Mikka left the room and hurled
herself recklessly along the route Klimpt had described.

Fortunately
the halls were becoming less busy. Her pace was dangerous — more so because
only one of her eyes focused well, and her depth perception was poor. If she
made a mistake, she could easily break an arm or a leg; crack her ribs. The
adrenaline pounding in her veins hurt her head as if she’d been hit again. But
she didn’t slow down. Nick had set Ciro up: he’d separated Ciro and Sib and her
so that Ciro would be vulnerable.

Vulnerable
to
Soar
. Nick had known she was here, that was obvious; the Lab’s
operational data would have told him even if
Trumpet’s
instruments didn’t.
For some reason he’d decided to dangle Ciro in front of Sorus Chatelaine like
bait.

Mikka
couldn’t imagine what he hoped to gain. At the moment she couldn’t imagine how
Soar
had known he was coming here. Nevertheless she was sure, as sure as fear,
that Ciro was in danger; that Nick meant to use him against his old enemy.

She
didn’t pass any more guards. Maybe they were all busy looking for her brother.

The
thought made her want to puke.

Hitting
a wall hard enough to shock her lungs, she rebounded into the room where Klimpt
had told her she would find Sib Mackern.

The
room was little more than a cubicle, with a data terminal set into one wall opposite
a reinforced door like an airlock. A sign over the door said GENERAL STORES.
Deaner Beckmann kept his supplies and equipment sealed away as if they were in
a vault — which made sense, considering the kind of people who came here to do
business with him.

Sib
stood in front of the terminal, frowning at the readout — or at the sweat
dripping onto his hands whenever he used the keypad.

He was
alone.

His
head jerked up when he heard her thud against the wall and rebound. Relief
broke across his strained features. “Mikka! Are we done? Can we—?”

Her
expression cut him off. His face froze; he stared at her, motionless, while she
fought to catch her breath.