The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (83 page)

That
probably wasn’t going to be easy. By reputation, at least, both Nick Succorso
and Angus Thermopyle were formidable opponents. In addition Thermopyle was a
UMCPDA cyborg, with resources even Taverner didn’t understand.
Trumpet
had secrets of her own. And Sorus’ gamble with the Vasaczk kid might too easily
be caught.

Nevertheless
she intended to gain this one more piece of death for her masters. So that she
could go beyond it.

A
palpable tension afflicted the bridge. Taverner had that effect. Potential
disasters charged the air. Her people sweated over their boards; clung to their
duties fretfully.

She
knew how they felt. Still their tightness worried her. Men and women with their
nerves pulled this taut made mistakes —

“Captain!”
The communications first’s voice cracked. “I’m getting audio transmission.”

Atoms
split along Sorus’ nerves, carrying fear like a nuclear pile. “Out here?” she
demanded. “Who’s trying to talk to us out here?”

What
the hell is going on?

“Milos
—” she began. Is
Calm Horizons
already here? What’s she doing? But his
unreactive face stopped her. He still wore the eyeshades she’d given him to
conceal his Amnion features. When she stared at him, a black strip gazed back,
as fathomless and unreadable as the gap.

“It’s
not aimed at us,” the woman on communications answered quickly. “General
broadcast — we just happened to overhear it. I’ve been scanning every frequency
we can get, just in case something leaks through that might help us. For a
while the reaction behind us fried all the bandwidths. But now we’re past it.”

General
broadcast? That made no sense. Who in their right mind would transmit a general
broadcast in this asteroid swarm under these conditions, with the Lab’s
destruction still flickering and spitting in the background?

“Locate
the source,” Sorus ordered.

“Sorry,
Captain. I’ve already tried. It was just one short burst. We didn’t have a
chance to triangulate. And it wasn’t coded for position, time, anything like
that. Just plain voice transmission. I can give you the quadrant, that’s all.”

Sorus
chewed her lower lip for a moment. “All right,” she replied. “Let’s hear it.”

“Aye,
Captain.” Communications tapped keys, reversed her log to the data she wanted,
then activated the speakers.

At once
the bridge fell silent. No one breathed or moved.

“Cut
me, will you?” a man’s voice said out of the dark. “Come on, bitch.”

His
tone had a curious hollow resonance which made it sound constricted in some
way. Yet it was almost unnaturally clear — distance and static should have
affected it more.

“Just a
little closer. Come find out what that costs.”

The
voice nagged at her memory. She nearly recognised it —

“It’s
time to pay.”

“Captain
Chatelaine,” Milos Taverner put in as if even he finally felt something which
might have been surprise, “that is Captain Succorso.”

She
knew he was right as soon as he spoke. Nick Succorso. Somewhere nearby — too
near.
Come on, bitch.
Setting a trap, calling her into it.

Why did
he sound so hollow, constricted?

Just
a little closer.

She
should have known the answer; should have recognised it, too; but she didn’t
have time.

“Scan,
damn it!” she barked urgently. “What’s out there? What’re we getting into?”

“Nothing,
Captain,” the woman on scan protested. “Nothing except rock. I’ve got
Trumpet’s
trail, but she’s still ahead of us, we haven’t caught up with her without
knowing it. And I can’t see anything else. We’re the only ship here.”

Sorus
didn’t hesitate. “Targ, stand by. Helm, evasive action on my order. Taverner,
you’d better anchor yourself somewhere. We’re going to start kicking around
pretty hard.”

Taverner
stepped in front of her console and clamped himself there with one hand. The
other remained on the controls of his SCRT.

“There’s
nothing
out
there,” scan insisted, staring wide-eyed at her displays.

It’s
time to pay.

“Tighten
your video sweep,” Sorus commanded harshly. “Get me visual all around the ship.”

With
her thumb she set off alert klaxons throughout
Soar
.

“Ready,
helm?”

Before
helm could respond, scan gasped, “Shit! Captain, we just lost one of the
cameras!”

Sorus
let herself shout. “
Get me visual!
Damn it, I want to see what’s out
there!”

At the
same instant the woman on communications hissed, “Captain!” and keyed the
speakers again.

Hollow
and deadly, like a voice from the grave, Succorso said, “I warned you. Sorus is
mine.”

Christ!

This
time communications had no difficulty fixing the source. “God!” she cried,
involuntarily frantic. “He’s right on top of us!”

Scan
was focused too far away, that was the problem — looking for objects that were
too big. Right on top of us. That odd, constricted resonance in his voice:
Sorus had almost recognised it. Of course. She should have understood
immediately.

But how
could she or anyone have guessed that Succorso was crazy enough to do something
like this?

“Captain,”
scan shouted at her, “we’re hit! Laser fire!”

“Confirm
that,” the man on data barked from his readouts. “We’re under attack. We’ve got
damage.”

What
damage? Where were they hit?

One
thing at a time.

Sorus
drove her voice through the fear and consternation of her people. “Where’s
visual?
”

“Coming,
Captain!” scan croaked.

An
instant later the main screen split into images as three of
Soar’s
external cameras swivelled toward the point of attack. From conflicting
perspectives — shock, nausea, rage — Sorus saw figures in EVA suits.

Just
two of them: two lone human shapes in the vast swarm, assaulting her ship as if
they thought they could beat her on their own. And one was already out of
action; unquestionably dead: drifting away from the hull with a weightless
fountain of blood where his faceplate should have been.

Soar
was being attacked by one man. One lunatic who’d
just lost or killed his only companion.

But he
knew what he was doing.

Clamped
magnetically to the metal, he stood facing the superlight proton port. In his
arms he held a laser rifle; a big one. Etched garish and fatal out of the dark
by searchlights, he fired and fired into the base of the cannon.

“What
the fuck’s he doing?” helm asked as if he couldn’t trust his eyes; couldn’t
understand what he saw.

Targ
knew the answer. “Captain,” he announced in shock, “I’ve lost the proton
cannon. It’s dead. Completely.”

“Confirm
that,” data said again. “He’s burned the power conduits. Now he’s slagging the
mounts. It’s already more damage than we can repair ourselves. We’ll need a
shipyard.”

Suddenly
the data first wheeled his station to face Sorus. “Captain,” he told her
hoarsely, “that’s a hell of a laser rifle. In another thirty seconds, he’ll cut
deep enough to breach the inner hull.”

As if
in response, the figure in the EVA suit — Succorso — stopped firing. He raised
his head. Searchlights glared off his faceplate as he looked around.

With a
quick thin shaft of ruby light, he killed one of the cameras. The images on the
display broke up, then resolved from three to two.

That
must be what had happened to the first camera.

Almost
casually, Succorso swung to face the next one. “Keep watching, bitch,” he said
as if he was sure she could see him. “You’re next.”

It’s
time to pay.

One of
his images disappeared in red flame. Only one remained.

More
damage than we can repair ourselves.

Sorus
didn’t hesitate. She’d survived for so many years because she could make
decisions when she needed to, and her instincts were good.

Pounding
commands into her board, she jettisoned the entire proton cannon assembly.

At the
same instant the last camera died in laser fire.

Massive
iron thunder rang throughout
Soar
as an array of shaped charges went off
simultaneously. As precise in their own way as Succorso’s laser, they sheared
bolts and welds, detached plates, sealed conduits, cauterised wiring. The whole
ship staggered like a wounded beast when the big gun ripped free.

But the
screen was blank. Sorus didn’t get to see the explosions tear Succorso in half;
the spray of blood from his ruptured torso. She could imagine it, but she hadn’t
seen it.

Repercussions
seemed to echo through the hull, spreading the violence. The data first shouted
into his pickup, sealing bulkheads against the possibility of lost atmosphere;
marshalling damage control teams. Everyone else stared at Sorus as if she were
as crazy as Nick Succorso.

Communications
told her he’d stopped transmitting.

That
wasn’t enough to comfort her.

Her
nerves burned like laser fire with shock, nausea, and rage as she confronted
Milos Taverner. Somehow, somewhere, if she ever got the chance, she was going
to shoot him square in the centre of his smug, pudgy face.

“Have
you got the picture now, Taverner?” she rasped. “Have you figured it out?

“He set
us up. Succorso
set us up!
I don’t know why he thought damaging us like
this was worth dying for,” no, that was the wrong question, the damage was
obviously worth doing, what she didn’t know was why he’d taken it on himself, “but
he tricked us into this. We’ve been playing his game all along.

“He let
us have the Vasaczk kid to suck us in. We thought we were ahead of him, but he
was just laying bait. There won’t be any sabotage. If
Trumpet
acts hurt,
it’ll be another sham, that’s all.

“Without
that cannon, we’re only about half as dangerous as we were a couple of minutes
ago.”

The
Amnioni considered his alien priorities. “Yet Captain Succorso is now dead,” he
observed.

“Only
because he didn’t know I would jettison the cannon!” Her action had been almost
as crazy as his; almost as desperate. And she hadn’t seen the explosions hit
him — “Otherwise he would still be blazing away at us. In thirty seconds he
would have breached the hull! Then we would be in
real
trouble.”

But
yelling at Taverner gained nothing. With an effort, she restrained her fury,
swallowed her nausea. “If you’re really in contact with
Calm Horizons
,”
she finished, “you’d better make damn sure she gets here in time to help us. We’re
going to need it.”

She
couldn’t see Milos’ eyes, but the angle of his head told her that he was
consulting his strange box.

“Help
will come, Captain Chatelaine,” he pronounced quietly. “
Calm Horizons
has already entered the Massif-5 system.”

Data
and scan kept working as best they could. The rest of the bridge crew gaped at
him in surprise. They hadn’t believed that something like this was possible.

Slowly
Taverner raised his head. “I argued against this,” he explained for reasons
Sorus didn’t understand. “Something here” — in an oddly naive gesture, he
touched his hand to his chest — “warns of danger. Such men as Nick Succorso and
Angus Thermopyle are fatal. But the exigency of our requirements makes the risk
necessary.

“The
defensive will be in position to prevent
Trumpet’s
escape from this
asteroid swarm in less than an hour. If she attempts to flee by attaining
adequate gap velocity, she will be destroyed. And if she seeks to evade or
resist capture in the swarm,
Calm Horizons
and
Soar
will trap her
between them.

“I will
co-ordinate communications,” he concluded, “so that no mistakes will be made.”

No
mistakes. Right.

Sorus
looked away from him to study her readouts. This whole situation was a mistake
— disastrous from first to last. Succorso had outplayed her. Worse, Thermopyle
was still doing it. She’d lost her best weapon, and all her gambles were being
turned against her.

She
wasn’t ordinarily a woman who prayed; but now she begged her nameless stars to
give her one good UMCP warship.

ANCILLARY

DOCUMENTATION

WARDEN
DIOS:

BACKGROUND
INFORMATION

[These
notes — among others — were found in Warden Dios’ files when Data Acquisition
Director Hashi Lebwohl succeeded at breaking the former UMCP director’s private
codes.]