Gap [1] The Real Story: The Gap into Conflict (10 page)

Through sheer force of panic, he stayed in Mallorys for more than an hour: long enough to appear normal; to ensure the word would be passed that Angus Thermopyle was back on station; long enough so no one would guess he was afraid. Then he took Morn back to
Bright Beauty.

She expected trouble. He saw it in the covert way she glanced at him, in the concealed alarm and compliance of her posture. She had a secret now, an intention she needed to protect. Well, good for her. He meant trouble. He was perfectly willing to defile and humiliate every inch of her to take the sting out of his heart. His stomach was a knot of black hate, and his brain was so full of violence he could hardly keep his balance.

When they’d boarded the ship, he made a deliberate and meticulous show of sealing the hatches, rigging security alarms, cutting off communication; isolating
Bright Beauty
from the Station, as if he wanted to prolong the suspense for her, give her every chance to be terrified by what was coming.

After that, he engaged her zone-implant control.

He planned only to make her passive. He wanted her to see and feel everything he did. But his fingers seemed to have a mind of their own. His whole body ignored the dark ruin clamoring inside him. Instead of tuning Morn to passivity, or even catatonia, he pushed the buttons which put her to sleep. Then he scooped her up in his arms and carried her to a berth.

He settled her on the thin mattress; adjusted a pillow under her head; tucked a blanket around her, securing it to its g-seals. While his stomach clenched and tore, and his brain reeled, he left her and closed off the passageway to her cabin, locking himself alone in the command module.

Then he started to howl like a grief-stricken beast.

CHAPTER

12

H
e would have been better off if he had gone to a bootleg shipyard, of course. Perhaps he could have sold Morn’s favors for the money he needed to get
Bright Beauty
made whole. Power over her would have brought a much higher price there than on Com-Mine Station. And—assuming Nick Succorso followed him—he could have faced his enemy in a more naked and therefore fairer arena.

He would have been better off if he’d simply undocked from Com-Mine Station, launched a few torpedoes at
Captain’s Fancy
, and then fled for his life.

He would have been better off if he’d killed Morn Hyland and ashed her in
Bright Beauty’s
thruster tubes.

In fact, from moment to moment during the next two standard weeks he fully intended to do any one or all of those things. But he didn’t.

Instead, he worked on arranging Nick’s destruction.

First, of course, he took care of
Bright Beauty.
He had her serviced as thoroughly as possible without major repairs. He paid for X-ray analysis to test her shell and bulkheads for metal fatigue. He bought all the new components he could afford. And he gave her name and id letters a fresh coat of paint.

At the same time, however, he asked questions whenever he could. He paid sums which nearly broke him for information—even for hints. And finally, guided by those hints, for one brief, glorious moment he succeeded at breaking into the Station’s main computer. Before the computer’s security systems forced him to retreat so that his intrusion wouldn’t be traced, he pulled as much data as he could.

By some standards, it wasn’t much. Routine files aside, all he gleaned was the codes and routing by which
Captain’s Fancy
talked to the Station’s computer network.

In theory, this knowledge was useless to him. After all, he couldn’t get at the physical lines which carried
Captain’s Fancy’s
business to the computers and back again. Anything that tampered with the integrity of those lines would register immediately. And knowledge of the codes and routing was pointless without access to the actual data-stream.

Angus was desperate, however. In his own opinion, he’d lost his mind. In self-defense, he put Morn to sleep, so that she wouldn’t know about and couldn’t interfere with what he did. Then, hyperventilating so hard that his suit could hardly keep up with it, and sweating like a beast, he went EVA.

He got away with it because it was such an odd thing to do. People who wanted to work outside their ships did so in the shipyard, over on the other side of Com-Mine. And only men as suspicious as Angus himself scanned the ships around them while they were in dock. Apparently Nick Succorso wasn’t that suspicious. Or maybe he had too much confidence in his own invulnerability. Nobody noticed what Angus was doing.

Clamped to the metal surface with limpets, and keeping his head turned grimly away from the fathomless starfield, he moved along the staggering curve of Com-Mine’s skin from
Bright Beauty
to
Captain’s Fancy.
When he got there, he used a current sensor to read each of the lines connecting the ship to the Station until he identified the one that carried the data-stream. Then, with savage care, he wrapped a dummy line tightly around it from output to receptacle and ran the dummy back to his ship.

Aboard
Bright Beauty
again, he didn’t give himself time to recover from the ordeal of EVA. He was obsessed. His hands shook in eagerness and fear as he sent power down his line, surrounding
Captain’s Fancy’s
data-stream with a delicate magnetic field. Then he put a scope on his fine and watched the field for fluctuations.

It worked. Under full boost, his scope began to show a swift series of spikes and scoops, a fluttering progression too quick for the eye to interpret.

His computer had the codes and routing: now it had an echo of the actual data-stream. Soon he could call up a display of everything
Captain’s Fancy
and Com-Mine Station said to each other.

Under different circumstances, his interest in this information would have been specific and temporary. He would have used what he knew to plunder Nick’s finances, transfer to himself everything Nick owned. It wouldn’t have been difficult to make that kind of computer transaction untraceable, using his own codes and routing. Then he would have detached his dummy line and sat back, daring anyone aboard
Captain’s Fancy
to guess what had happened.

Now, however, Angus had other plans.

In a sense, the situation was simplified by the fact that Nick didn’t have enough money to repair
Bright Beauty.
Despite his successful air, he was no wealthier than Angus. Without that temptation, Angus had an easier time stifling the impulse to touch or alter anything he found. He didn’t want to warn his enemy of the danger, didn’t want to let Nick know he was being stalked.

Instead of tampering with the data-stream, he programmed his computer to alert him if any one of a long list of key words and names appeared in the ship-Station dialogue. As an afterthought, because he was inherently suspicious, he told the computer to do the same if any unidentifiable codes were used.

Then he left
Bright Beauty
and went about the business of behaving normally.

When he returned to his ship and reviewed what his computer had gleaned, he found no mention of himself or Morn or anything he could recognize. He learned only that Nick Succorso was faithful about logging in and out of
Captain’s Fancy.

And Nick had received two messages in a code Angus’ computer didn’t recognize and couldn’t crack.

Angus had no way to read those messages. But he could trace them because he already knew the routing.

They came from Station Security.

When he discovered that, he wanted to laugh and scream and break something and celebrate all at once. It was the perfect touch—the final reason why his bluff had worked. There was in fact a leak in Security, a traitor. Why else would Nick Succorso be receiving coded messages from that source? The vacuum-based accusation Angus had prepared to protect his hold on Morn had hit Com-Mine’s inspectors where they lived: its blind accuracy had given it an almost prescient credibility.

And Nick Succorso’s swashbuckling success was based on inside information. He had an ally in Security; a friend in power.

Characteristically, Angus didn’t worry about
why.
He didn’t even care about
how.
The fact itself was all that interested him.

Nick Succorso had an ally in Security.

That made him more dangerous. But it also diminished him. He didn’t stand on his own: he was a good face with nothing behind it; empty bravado. A nerve-juice addict could do everything he did—as long as the junkie had inside information to back him up, a friend in power. Nick could sneer at anybody he wanted; but it only mattered because he had Security on his side.

“You bastard,” Angus muttered through his teeth. “You shit-eating bastard. I’m going to rip your balls off.”

It was just a question of when and where.

CHAPTER

13

D
uring this period—nearly a week—Morn Hyland spent most of her time either catatonic or asleep. When Angus wanted to use her, he did so without rousing her from the influence of her zone implant. He didn’t want her to know what he was doing: he couldn’t take the risk that she might find some way to sabotage him. For that reason, he got her out of bed only for meals, or to go to Mallorys with him.

Every time he used her body, he hardened his resolve against Nick Succorso. And every time he took her out in public, the desire to protect her burned as brightly as terror in him.

But the second week was different. Now Angus timed his trips away from
Bright Beauty
to coincide with Nick’s absences from
Captain’s Fancy.
And he wore under his shipsuit a nerve beeper, a small electrode taped to the skin and set to tingle whenever
Captain’s Fancy
relayed a summons for Nick through Com-Mine communications, requesting his return to his ship. Taking Morn with him now to Mallorys was part of Angus’ plan, part of the bait. He wanted to make Nick see her and do something: he wanted to make Nick want her badly enough to take action.

In fact, he almost went so far as to buy her new clothes. She could be ravishing, if he gave her the chance. And he ached to do that, for his own sake as well as hers, so that she would be ravishing and
his
, like
Bright Beauty
with fresh paint.

But in the end he decided to keep her in her rumpled, illfitting shipsuit, not because of the money, but because of the danger. If she looked too good, she might attract trouble he wasn’t ready for. And there was always the possibility—he took it seriously only because he was too suspicious to do anything else—that Nick was smart enough to smell a trap when it was smothered in perfume.

He wanted Nick to do something because almost anything he did would give Angus an excuse to kill him—and would provide as well a plea of self-defense against any murder charge. Angus could be ready for almost anything because he knew more about Nick’s business and activities than Nick could guess.

And when Nick was gone, Angus would be in an ideal position to make use of what he knew about Station Security. Nick’s ally might become his. A little leverage, a little blackmail, might make it possible for Angus to live as well as Nick did now.

So he made sure Nick saw Morn as often as possible. Secretly, cunningly, so that no one grasped what he was doing, he flaunted her in front of Nick, urging him, goading him.

At the same time, darkness swirled around in Angus’ head and his hands itched for blood because he knew that behind her blank expression, her wounded and necessary emptiness, Morn was on fire for his enemy.

Each time he put her where she and Nick could see each other, he swore to himself,
promised
, that as soon as he got her back to the ship he was going to rip out her female organs and feed them down the garbage processor, so that no man would ever have any reason to desire her again.

And each time, when they returned to
Bright Beauty
, he couldn’t control the gentleness which came over him. He flung obscenities at her with his mouth; but his touch was soft, nearly tentative. The things he made her do were strangely decorous, almost considerate, as if after depriving her of will and hope and humanity he wished her to forgive him.

She tried to hide it, but she couldn’t conceal her perplexity. He knew her too well: he could read the color of her eyes, the small muscles in her cheeks. She felt the change in him, the distress, and didn’t know what it meant.

Gentleness? From Angus Thermopyle? She knew
him
too well.

She watched him as if she could see that he was doomed.

Was she gloating? He believed she was. He believed that she already counted on Nick Succorso to rescue her and destroy him. He believed that she was already measuring out his blood in drops of pain. The thought made all his limbs knot with the force of his need to tear her apart.

Yet he didn’t hurt her. She was too precious. And too perplexed. Her confusion had implications he couldn’t begin to understand. He wasn’t the kind of man who could imagine that she might be reconsidering her hate. He could never have understood that his fear and gentleness might have touched her in the very place which his abuse had made vulnerable.

Alone in the command module, he had to grind his teeth to keep from howling.

Damn you completely to hell and horror! What have you done to me?

He told himself he was ready. He’d been a match for men like Nick Succorso since he was twelve. And he knew everything he needed about Nick except the content of those coded messages. He was
ready.
Of course he was ready.

But the clenched ache deep down in his gut told him he wasn’t ready. He felt that he was never going to be ready again.

What have you
done
to me?

He spent all the time his enemy allowed him feverishly trying to break that secret code. But whenever Nick left
Captain’s Fancy
, Angus also took Morn out
of Bright Beauty
so that no one would know—so that he himself wouldn’t know—how fundamental and compulsory his fear had become.

Finally he reached the end of his endurance. He’d waited and plotted and struggled for a week, and still Nick did nothing. Angus never doubted that some harm was being planned against him: he simply couldn’t bear the suspense any longer. Any day now, he was going to fall on his knees and beg Morn to pardon him. And if that happened, he was ruined.

Fear and desperation made him do things that looked brave—or at least foolhardy.

With Morn, he spent an inordinately long time in Mallorys, buying drinks that only tightened the knot in his stomach, glowering ferociously at everyone who addressed him, seething under Nick’s gaze and ignoring it. But when Nick got up to leave with his crew, his retinue, Angus also heaved upright, snarled Morn to his side.

Without much difficulty, he contrived to arrive in the doorway in time to block Nick’s way.

In fact, it seemed a little too easy. Angus’ instincts were shrill with alarm. Nick seemed to want this encounter as much as he did.

But he couldn’t back down; not now. He was too scared.

“After you, Captain Succorso,” he growled, making no effort to disguise his malice. “I know you’re in a hurry.”

Nick bowed gracefully, but didn’t move. “On the contrary, Captain Thermo-pile.” Except for his scars, his expression was bland. “I’m in no hurry at all. Please”—he gestured expansively—“after you.”

His gaze and his bow and his gesture were all aimed at Morn.

“Ther-mop-a-lee,” Angus retorted. “Ther-mop-a-lee. Get it right, Succorso.”

“Really?” Nick cocked a self-assured eyebrow. Apparently he liked the situation. Perhaps it was a kind of stim he especially enjoyed, an adrenaline rush. “Right here in the door? Extraordinary.

“You’re plotting, Captain Thermo-pile. You’re hatching something. You’ve got it in your pocket right now. Or are you just playing with yourself?

“Why don’t you open up about it? Let someone in to help you.”

In one way, Angus seemed to go blind with rage. Playing?
Playing?
But in another, he’d never been clearer, calmer. I’ll show you who’s
playing.

He was at his best when he was terrified.

Nick and his retinue—three men, two women—were unarmed; otherwise they wouldn’t have been allowed into Mallorys. But they didn’t need needle-lasers or old-fashioned shivs against one man. And they were ready to fight for their captain, at any time, in any place. What he’d done to deserve that kind of loyalty, Angus couldn’t imagine. But he didn’t doubt that the six of them would relish beating him into the deck-plates.

Outside Mallorys, the wide public passages of DelSec were deserted. It was the time of day when most people either drank or stayed in their quarters. Assuming that anybody on Com-Mine Station would have been willing to help Angus in a fight, that help wasn’t available now.

He let Nick see him swallow, hesitate. Then he said, “Let’s talk about it outside.” Deliberately he copied Nick’s gesture. “After you.”

“No, I insist.” Nick grinned. “I’m after
you.”

“The hell you are,” Angus muttered. “You don’t care about me. You’re after her.” Then he shouldered ahead of Nick through the doorway.

In his pocket, one of his fingers tapped Morn’s zone-implant control, sending a spasm through her muscles, a neural storm that looked like violence. As a result, she blocked the exit behind Nick as if she was on Angus’ side and wanted to fight for him.

At the same time, Angus pivoted on Nick, grabbed him by his shipsuit, and slung him like a duffel bag around and against the wall.

Surprise and strength gave him all the advantage he needed. With the back of his hand, he struck Nick across the side of his head—a blow that cracked and echoed in the passage like a rivet shearing under stress. The blow made Nick crumple; but Angus held him up and struck him again.

Then he was out of time.

Nick’s retinue burst out of Mallorys, knocking Morn to the deck. They were hot for blood.

Angus faced them as if he were calm. With his hands, he dangled Nick’s unconscious form in front of them. His fingers were wrapped around their captain’s neck.

“Go fucking back inside.” His voice sounded like an amiable mine-hammer. “Leave me fucking alone. I’m not fucking done with him.”

For a second, Nick’s crew faltered, chagrin on their faces.

Then the two women jerked Morn up from the deck and clamped hands to her windpipe.

Morn continued thrashing. Now she looked like she was seriously fighting for her life. Her eyes took in everything; she understood how Angus was using her. But she couldn’t stop her struggles.

“Standoff,” a man said. “You kill him, we kill her.”

The danger wrenched Angus’ heart. The need to remain still was so acute it nearly broke him. He wanted to drop Nick and charge at the women, hit and crush everybody who stood in his way, everybody who threatened Morn. But that would be suicide. He couldn’t beat all five of them before one of them got him. Or Morn. Somehow, he stood where he was and pretended he didn’t care.

“You’ve got it wrong. You kill her, I kill him. I don’t want him dead. I’m just protecting myself. Shits like you like six-to-one odds. I don’t.”

Abruptly he roared with all the force of his rage,
“Put her fucking down!”

They obeyed. They wanted to save Nick. And—Angus guessed—they didn’t want the responsibility of killing the woman Nick desired. They let go of Morn and backed away.

She dropped convulsively to the deck.

While he was still wrestling with his wish to attack them all, Angus’ nerve-beeper tingled, warning him that
Captain’s Fancy
had sent out a call for Nick Succorso.

He didn’t hesitate. If what he’d just done didn’t provoke some action, nothing would. Carelessly he opened his fists and let Nick fall. With the efficiency of long practice, he keyed the commands on the zone implant control which brought Morn back to her feet, restored her control of her limbs. Then he released her.

The way her gaze sprang involuntarily to Nick’s sprawled form hurt him worse than anything Nick could have done in a fight.

But
Captain’s Fancy’s
crew ignored her now. They didn’t try to stop Angus from leaving. Surely they had their own beepers. And their captain needed them.

Without interference, Angus returned Morn to
Bright Beauty
and sealed the hatches.

This time he was determined to do her serious harm. The blows he’d already struck flamed in his arm, burning for repetition. Violence made him hungry for more. He meant to damage her,
needed
to damage her. She deserved it.

But first he checked the computer monitoring
Captain’s Fancy’s
Station communications. He wanted to know why Nick was being summoned.

The explanation was in code.
Captain’s Fancy
had received one of those messages from Security and immediately requested Nick Succorso’s return to his ship.

Cursing as foully as he knew how, Angus Thermopyle abandoned his purpose against Morn Hyland. Something was about to happen. His instincts were shouting at him, yelling at him to
leave
, go at once, escape before Nick could take revenge. But he ignored that warning. There was no way to leave; he was already committed. He ordered Morn to her g-seat, ordered her to strap herself in. Then he keyed his monitor to display current data from
Captain’s Fancy.

He knew it when Nick got aboard.

After that, for some reason
Captain’s Fancy
cleared all channels and stopped talking to Station.

Because his instincts clamored like klaxons, Angus snapped at Morn, “Warm up. Get ready. I think we’re going somewhere.”

She obeyed the way he liked: correctly, without question or delay.
Bright Beauty’s
systems came alive. Function lights winked awake on his console. Checklists and verifications flickered across the screens. Scanners started to feed running data into the computers: automatic navigational input from Station; information about the presence and movements of ships in Com-Mine Station’s control space.

While Morn worked, Angus concentrated on
Captain’s Fancy.

What was Nick doing?

Getting ready. Of course. Getting ready to leave.

But why?

Because Security had told him something.

What?

Angus sucked his upper lip. What had Security told Nick Succorso?

His boards and screens cleared.
Bright Beauty
was prepared to go. Morn sat still, staring at nothing, her hands resting on her console so they could do whatever he told her quickly.

Indecision paralyzed him. He didn’t know how to go against his instincts. They’d saved him too often. If he didn’t listen to them, he was lost.