The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (93 page)

From
her perspective, Angus towered over her at the command station. Beyond him
across the bridge, Davies worked the second’s console: on his screens he
laboured to project a position for some other vessel.

Soar
? Or the other ship, the stranger?

Morn
wanted to know the answer, although she didn’t care which it was.

With an
effort she lifted her head. “Angus.” Coruscations spangled the back of her
head, rippled down her spine. “What happened? Where are we? Are we intact?”

Davies
jerked his head toward her. “Morn?” he croaked in dismay. “Christ!” Apparently
he hadn’t realised she was still there. He’d been concentrating too hard to
notice her. “Are you all right?”

Angus
had no time to spare for Davies, but he did for Morn. When he heard her voice,
he wheeled his g-seat as if he were trying to fling it free of its mounts. Rage
mottled his skin; feral stains seemed to flush from his face down his neck into
his torso. His eyes burned with coercion or hysteria.

“I told
you to get off the bridge!” he roared. “God
damn
it, Morn, what the
fuck
do you think you’re doing? You think we
need
you here? You think we
can’t make decisions or push keys unless you tell us what to do? Or are you
just tired of living? It’s been too long since you got to play self-destruct?”
Clutching the edges of his board, he strained toward her against his belts. “Do
you think I came all this way just so I could watch you lose your fucking
mind?

“
This
is my ship!
When I give you an order, you are going to
carry it out!
”

His
fury was fierce enough to draw blood. Perhaps because fading embolisms of
clarity still ran in her veins, however, he didn’t frighten her. She was
already bleeding: the bulkhead had drawn blood. Facing him as squarely as the
pain in her skull allowed, she murmured, “I guess that means we’re still
intact.”

He
rocked back in his g-seat as if her reaction punctured him; deflated him
somehow. “
Yes
, we’re still intact.” Surprise and speculation changed the
mottling on his skin to dull grime. “This kid of yours doesn’t have the sense
to focus targ before he fires, but he has good timing with a dispersion field.
That ship hit us hard without actually hitting us at all.”

His
eyes searched her as if he wanted to see inside her head.

“What’re
you trying to do to yourself?” Davies demanded thickly. “Why didn’t you go? Don’t
you know how dangerous—?”

His
protest trailed off.

“You
didn’t get gap-sickness.” Angus’ voice was harsh with doubt. “Or you were out
long enough for it to pass. Or I didn’t give you enough g to trigger it. Or you
used that damn zone implant so much you cauterised your brain. Shit, Morn, you
—”

Whatever
he might have said, he didn’t finish it.

Groaning
at the abrasions, Morn shifted her shoulders; climbed slowly into a sitting
position. He was right: something had prevented her gap-sickness from taking
hold. The g had been hard enough to make her crazy; she knew that. Had she been
unconscious long enough to mute her illness? Had she driven herself so hard
with her black box that she’d damaged neurons? Maybe. There was no way to tell.

Now
that the crisis was past, she felt a touch of relief.

And a
hint of sadness, as if she’d lost something she valued when the clear
commandments of the universe receded.

She
knew how Davies felt.

“So
where are we going?” she asked while she tested the extent of her scrapes and
bruises.

“That’s
right,” Davies muttered. “
You
ask him.” He sounded suddenly bitter. “He
won’t tell
me
.”

Like a
man throwing up his hands, Angus growled, “Back. Into the swarm.” Grimacing in
disgust or bafflement, he referred to the screens. “You can see that.”

Davies
snarled a curse, but Angus ignored him.

“You
haven’t studied Beckmann’s charts like I have,” Angus went on. “From where we
are, there isn’t any reasonable course out of this mess except the one where we
met that other ship. Unless you like clearing rock out of your way by running
into it. We’re stuck between
Soar
and that other bastard. We could duck
and dodge, maybe hide for a while, but eventually they’re going to find us.

“I want
to deal with them one at a time. If they hit us together, even dispersion
fields aren’t going to keep us intact. So I’ll try
Soar
first, see what
we can do. I know more about her.” With his own bitterness, he added, “And
there’s always a chance Captain Sheepfucker damaged her. That might help us.

“Besides,”
he went on harshly, “I know that other ship. We’ve seen her before.”

He didn’t
pause. Anger and desperation drove him. “Her name’s
Free Lunch
. She was
at Billingate the same time we were. She got out a couple of hours ahead of us.
We heard her name from operational transmissions in Billingate’s control space.
Scan picked up her emission signature.

“Do I
have to tell you what that means?” he snarled. Morn shook her head, but he didn’t
stop. “She knows us from Billingate. And she knows
Soar
. So it’s no
fucking coincidence that she turned up here just in time to start shooting at
us.”

“She’s
working with
Soar
,” Morn said for him. Oh, God, more enemies. How many
allies did Sorus Chatelaine have?

“If we
try to face both of them at once,” he finished, “we’re dead.”

He
shrugged violently, as if he were restraining an impulse to hit something. Then
he said more quietly, “And Sib’s back there. For whatever that’s worth. If
Soar
or Captain Sheepfucker didn’t kill him — and he’s out of the way when the
shooting starts — and we can beat
Soar —
and
Free Lunch
doesn’t
catch us too soon — and we’re able to find him —”

Angus
let the rest of the sentence die into the background whine of
Trumpet’s
drives, the whisper of air-scrubbers, the nearly subliminal hum of charged
matter cannon.

The
thought of Sib Mackern alone in the vast crackling turmoil of the swarm, slowly
dying inside his EVA suit while he waited for his air to run out or
Trumpet
to come for him, gave Morn a sharper sadness: the pang of it seemed to settle
against her heart like a blade. He might be better off if Nick killed him, or
Soar
did. The distress of his old fears and losses deserved some clean end.

How
long could he scream without dying inside?

How
many allies did Sorus Chatelaine have?

By an
act of will she set her questions aside. Speaking more to Davies than to Angus,
she said softly, “So this isn’t for revenge anymore. We’re going after
Soar
because
that’s better than the alternatives.”

Davies
appeared to swallow a retort. He needed his hunger for revenge on
Gutbuster
and Sorus Chatelaine: she understood that now. It protected him from deeper
terrors, keener madnesses. His own peculiar gap-sickness — the strange,
demented gulf separating who he was from what he remembered — lurked in him
avidly, waiting its time to strike. If he couldn’t fight for his image of who
he should have been, he might disappear between the dimensions of himself and
never return.

Trying
to help her son, she asked Angus, “Do you know how you want to tackle her?”

He
shook his head; for a moment he didn’t reply. He may have been consulting his
databases or programming. Then he said, “Depends on how far away we spot her.
How much cover we can use. Whether we get a clear field of fire. I can’t be
sure.

“But
this time,” he told Davies, “don’t be so goddamn eager to shoot.” His tone was
gruff. Yet Morn thought she heard something more than disdain in it. Amusement,
maybe? Recognition? “There’s only one real defence against a super-light proton
cannon. You have to take out the gun before they can use it.

“Sometimes
your shields hold. If you’re far enough away. And sometimes, if you’re too
fucking lucky to die, you can shove a matter blast right down the throat of the
proton beam. That seems to fray it somehow, take the edge off. Then maybe your
shields can hold. But nobody gets that lucky very often.

“So don’t
waste your time pulverising a few rocks. Focus. If we get a good look at her,
scan can identify her emitters.”

Awkwardly,
as if Morn’s presence disturbed his concentration, Davies sent schematics to
one of the displays, reminding himself of the configuration and emission
signature which characterised super-light proton cannon.

Holding
her breath against the throb in her head, Morn rose from the deck and reached
for a handgrip. Manoeuvring thrust held her against the bulkhead, but
Trumpet
wasn’t turning hard enough to threaten her. Nevertheless she cleated her zero-g
belt to an anchor. That was the only precaution she could take — short of
leaving the bridge.

For a
moment she studied Angus’ scan plot. Then she asked, “How long do you think we
have?”

Do I
have time to go to sickbay for some cat?

Do I
have to decide whether I’m willing to take more drugs?

“Minutes,”
Angus growled distantly. “More, less, I don’t fucking know.” He was sinking
back into the mechanical focus of his microprocessor. “
Soar
isn’t
coasting, that’s for damn sure. She wants to catch us before we can leave the
swarm.”

Not
enough time to go to sickbay. Morn cleared her lungs with a sigh. She’d made
her decision when she hadn’t left the bridge earlier.

Had she
simply been unconscious long enough to outlast her gap-sickness? Was that what
had saved her? Or had something inside her changed? Had she crossed a personal
gap into other possibilities?

Like
identity — or like the relationship between identity and fear — gap-sickness
was a mystery. No one understood it.

No one
had enough time —

“
There!
”
Angus stabbed keys, and a scan image sprang to life on one of the displays.

Thirty
k away, past an oscillating jumble of rocks the size of EVA suits and other
loose debris, a ship swung past the bulk of an asteroid big enough to block her
from
Trumpet’s
sensors. While the image sharpened, the ship lined her
prow in
Trumpet’s
direction.

Emission
numbers along the bottom of the screen spiked rapidly. Targ tracking: the ship
was about to fire.

Scan
identified her profile instantly; configuration; thrust characteristics. She
was
Soar
.

Under
the circumstances, she was moving fast. Her velocity was nearly as high as
Trumpet’s
.
They would be within ramming range of each other in twenty seconds.

“Shit!”
Instantly frantic, Davies hammered his board, searching for his target. “I can’t—!”
His voice cracked. “Angus, I can’t find her emitters!”

Morn
clenched both fists on her handgrip and hung there, watching. If Davies couldn’t
see the emitters,
Soar
must not be oriented to use her proton cannon.

“Forget
it!” Angus snapped back. “Pay attention! Fire torpedoes, then static mines,
then matter cannon! Then get on that dispersi —”

He was
cut off. Numbers shrilled red along the display: klaxons yowled.

Shoulders
hunching like a strangler’s, he jammed his fingers onto the helm keys, hauling
Trumpet
sideways with every gram of lateral thrust she could generate.

A small
fraction of a heartbeat later, scan scrambled and shut down, foundering in
Soar’s
matter cannon barrage.

The gap
scout staggered as if she’d run into a wall. Alarms and metal stress shrieked
at each other like the fury of the damned. Morn slammed to the side; bounced
back in time to see
Trumpet’s
particle sinks red-lining on one of the
displays as they strained to bleed off the impact — absorb the impossible
picoseconds during which the cannon’s energy attained near-infinite mass.

In
increments of time only a CPU could measure, the sinks failed: one by one they
overloaded and seemed to burst like exploded glass. Yet they must have saved
the ship. Or else the coincident static seethe of the swarm’s electromagnetic
friction had eroded some of
Soar’s
force. Or Angus’ evasion had spared
Trumpet
a direct hit. Despite the clangor of stress and the howl of alarms, Morn would
have heard the deep-throated, whooping shout of the klaxon which warned that
the ship had broken open.

Would
have, but didn’t. Therefore
Trumpet’s
hulls held.

Through
the racket, Angus raged, “
Do what I told you!
”

Bracing
himself with one arm on the end of his board, Davies launched plasma torpedoes,
sprayed out static mines. Using residual scan data to direct targ, he fired a
blind volley of matter cannon.

He must
have missed. He wasn’t Angus; simply wasn’t fast enough to extrapolate both
Trumpet’s
and
Soar’s
new positions and take them into account.