The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (98 page)

MORN

I
t’s
Free Lunch
,” Davies had croaked into his intercom. “
God
,
Angus!
Now
what’re we going to do?”

Morn
could see the other ship’s blip on the screens. She stared at its place in her
course projection overlay as if her heart had failed. The terror of
Starmaster’s
murder filled her, and she couldn’t move.

She
understood cold ignition. Some ships were able to do that. The acceleration
would be severe, but not cruel. From a cold start,
Trumpet’s
thrust
drive wouldn’t generate enough force to push her and Davies beyond their
physiological limits. They had trained under hard g: they could bear it. If she
didn’t fall into clarity and craziness —

But her
course projection was a problem of another kind; insuperable. The scale of thrust
Trumpet
could produce, the nearness of
Soar
, and the nature of
the available route through the swarm had determined the course Morn had
programmed. There were no alternatives.

As
Trumpet
pulled off the asteroid and came around, she would pass — would have to pass —
straight in front of
Free Lunch
.

Davies’
fingers hit and flashed on his board. Targ displays jumped up and down the
screens: scan scrambled to find its way through the residue of the storm.
Free
Lunch
took on definition, looming and fatal. It was obvious which of the
two ships would survive a collision. And
Free Lunch
would be able to
fire at point-blank range —

Morn
had no choice. The helm computer showed her none. If
Trumpet
didn’t go
there
,
she would go nowhere at all.

Angus’
stertorous respiration scraped and ached over the intercom as if he were dying.

Morn
wanted to call out,
Help me
, God damn you! Tell me what to do! But she
didn’t believe he was in any condition to hear her.

Then
another fear took hold of her.

What if
Trumpet
did
go
there?
What if she survived? What happened
then?

Morn
couldn’t reach past the immediate crisis. Beyond her course projection lay only
darkness: asteroids and collisions; blank scan and blind navigation; hard g,
unconsciousness, gap-sickness. She hadn’t studied Deaner Beckmann’s charts or
the lost Lab’s operational data. She didn’t know how to think beyond the doom
on the overlay in front of her.

But the
gap scout and everyone aboard would die if she failed: if
Trumpet
survived
Soar
and
Free Lunch
, and Morn hadn’t planned for what
came next.

She’d
already killed her father’s ship and most of her family.

Trembling
with fear, she copied
Trumpet’s
assigned departure protocols from the
log, then dummied them back to her helm program so that they would run
automatically. After that, she set the command overrides to slow or stop the
ship if her pre-set course threatened to damage her.

Morn
had no idea what else to do.

“Jesus,
Morn.” Abruptly Davies silenced his intercom pickup so that Angus wouldn’t hear
him. He turned his station partway toward her. “Do you know what he’s
doing?
”

She
shook her head. The course projection overlay held her, and her heart may have
failed. She couldn’t guess what Angus had in mind.

“He’s
taken one of the singularity grenades,” Davies murmured in awe or dismay. “Manual
launch. He thinks he can suck those ships into a black hole. My God, he must be
planning to
throw
it at one of them.”

Which
might have worked, if
Trumpet
had faced only one enemy. And if by some
miracle he could have contrived to place the grenade where it would absorb
enough power from its target.

But now
—

Morn
fought a desperate desire to hit the keys he’d prepared
now;
initiate
cold ignition and
move
while
Trumpet
still had a little room.
Angus wasn’t ready: he hadn’t given the order. He was dying outside the ship,
he might never give the order, perhaps his dread of EVA had already broken him.
Nevertheless he was
Trumpet’s
only real hope; her last chance. Premature
thrust might ruin what he was trying to do. Morn clenched her fists until her
fingers burned, and waited.

Without
warning Davies’ readouts snatched at his attention. Hints of
Soar
began
to appear. “There she is!” Emission data sharpened on the screens. When he saw
it, he yelped, “They’ve seen each other! They’re going to fire!”

He
pounded his pickup. But Morn was faster. She had too much death on her hands.

“Give
me orders!” she cried into her intercom. “Angus, tell me what to do!”

Davies
shouted at Angus, but she hardly heard him.

Scan
didn’t detect targ from either ship. They weren’t tracking
Trumpet
.

An
instant later the screen displayed matter cannon blasts like inaudible screams.
Trumpet’s
picture of the surrounding swarm dopplered in and out of
distortion as the computer laboured to filter the chaos.

“They’re
not firing at us!” Davies gaped at the data. “They think we’re finished. They’re
fighting each other.

“We
were wrong! They aren’t working together.”

The gap
scout seemed to have more enemies than Morn could count.

But
Soar
still hadn’t used her super-light proton cannon. Maybe she couldn’t —

Time
seemed to freeze between one barrage and the next. There was room to live or
die between the ticks of the command chronometer. Morn planted her fingers on
the cold ignition keys, braced herself despite the plain doom written in her
course projection. To some extent,
Soar
and
Free Lunch
would be
taken by surprise. Davies was right: they thought
Trumpet
was dead or
crippled. Otherwise they would have opened fire on her already. And surprise
would give the gap scout a few seconds. Distortion would give her a few
seconds. Neither assailant would be able to refocus targ instantly.

Whatever
else happened, Morn had to stay out of gap-sickness; needed absolutely to keep
herself sane. As soon as she hit those keys, she herself would become the most
immediate threat to the ship. If the universe spoke to her again, she was
ideally placed to obey. With helm under her hands, she could send
Trumpet
into collision with either of the other ships; with a rock; she could dive into
the heart of the black hole Angus hoped to create.

How had
she survived the last time? Her gap-sickness had come to life when she’d hit
the bulkhead; she’d felt it overwhelming her mind with crystalline compliance.
And then it had faded away, dying in her bloodstream like the waste of expended
neurotransmitters.

Why?

What
could she do to make that happen again?

All she
remembered was pain: the crack of her head against metal; the heavy abrasions
on her back.

Her
injuries still hurt. But she was sure that they didn’t hurt enough.

“I can
see the grenade,” Davies choked out, gasping like his father. “He’s launched it
somehow. Not at
Soar —
at
Free Lunch
. That makes sense. She’s
closer.

“I don’t
know how he does it.” Despite the way he breathed, his tone hinted at wonder,
admiration. “He may be crazy, but he’s got good aim. The grenade’s right on
target.”

If
Trumpet’s
sensors could identify the grenade, so could
Free Lunch’s
. But that ship
might not think to look.

An idea
caught at the back of Morn’s mind.

“My
God,” she breathed like her son. “That’s why he took the portable matter
cannon. To detonate the grenade.”

Detonate
it with enough added energy to make it effective.

“Is
that possible?” Davies whispered.

Morn
didn’t know. “Can we hit it ourselves?” she asked. “Set if off when it’s close
enough?”

“No
chance,” Davies panted. “Everything’s moving. There’s too much distortion. And
cold ignition won’t give us stable thrust. We’ll be lurching like mad. We would
be lucky to get within fifty meters of a target that small.”

Then
how could Angus hope to hit it?

He was
a cyborg: human and machine. Maybe his eyes and his computer and his zone
implants together were better than targ —

Free
Lunch
fired again, emptying her guns at
Soar
.
Soar
returned the barrage. The force they flung against each other would
have torn any undefended vessel apart. If a blast hit the grenade too soon —

It hadn’t
reached the field of fire yet. While
Soar
and
Free Lunch
blazed
back and forth, the grenade continued sailing toward its target.

Again
scan broke apart. At this distance, quantum discontinuities combined with
particle bleed-off from the sinks to create emission fury all along the
spectrum. More distortion: a few more seconds of cover.

“
Now!
”
Angus’ voice shrieked across the bridge. “
Do it
now
! Hit those keys!
”

With
all her strength, Morn obeyed.

At the
same instant Davies activated his guns, set them to pull charge from the drive.

A
shudder ran through
Trumpet
as if she’d taken an impact blast. Morn
jerked against her belts, flopped back into her g-seat. Energies powerful
enough to crack cold thruster tubes came to life in the drive. From
Soar’s
perspective, or
Free Lunch’s
,
Trumpet
may have appeared to be
embedded in the rock; but she was only resting there. Stone scraped a
nerve-rending cry along her hull as she flung herself dangerously into motion.

Pressure
built up on Morn’s bones: acceleration and manoeuvring g. As soon as
Trumpet
cleared the asteroid, the gap scout began curving along her programmed course,
turning to head away from the depths of the swarm.

Into
the path of Angus’ target: a ship that wanted her dead.

More
shudders shook her like explosions in the tubes — metal and polymerised
ceramics straining to absorb too much heat too fast and adjust to each other.
Morn’s head dug into the cushions of her g-seat; her back drove its abrasions
against the padding.

She
couldn’t remember any defence except pain.
As far as she could tell, only
the pressure of g saved her; only the fact that her head and back
hurt
—
She couldn’t float.

Lurching
like a derelict,
Trumpet
moved into the distortion toward the field of
fire.

She was
accelerating as hard as she could. She should have been able to generate more g
than this; far more. But cold thrust was unstable. It couldn’t come near its
full power until the tubes were hot. And Davies charged his guns, drawing
energy off the drive. She acquired velocity too slowly to open the universe in
Morn’s head.

At this
rate of acceleration
Trumpet
might as well have been stationary. Either
Soar
or
Free Lunch
could nail her the moment they got a clear look at
her.

Her
energy cells lacked the capacity to satisfy her matter cannon. But they held
enough power to project her dispersion field. If Davies’ timing was perfect, he
might be able to keep her alive until thrust stabilised; until she began to
burn in earnest, and Morn went mad —

Even if
the ship lasted that long, Angus might not survive the boson storm. Quantum
discontinuities might reduce his equipment’s signals to gibberish. His human
eyes might not be able to pierce the emission chaos.

Blips
on
Trumpet’s
screens seemed to spell out her death. She neared the field
of fire between
Soar
and
Free Lunch
. In another few seconds she
would run directly under
Free Lunch’s
guns. Scan and alarms shouted that
both opposing vessels were charged for another barrage.

Both
were hurt: their sinks overloaded, wailing of particle torture; their hulls
scored and dented, ports and antennae smashed; their energy profiles rippling
with stress. But
Soar
bore more damage than her attacker.

Earlier
wounds left her vulnerable.

“
Soar’s
got us,” Davies announced through his teeth. Sweat dripped in his voice;
concentration strained his eyes. Scan detected targ from
Soar’s
direction, saw cannon swivelling in their mounts. Nevertheless he was done
shouting. “
Free Lunch
is still aiming at her.”

For
Sorus Chatelaine, killing
Trumpet
must have been more important than
defending herself.

Emission
numbers jagged off the scale. At once Davies slammed keys fiercely with the
heel of his palm, raising the gap scout’s dispersion field.