Gap [1] The Real Story: The Gap into Conflict (12 page)

With all her strength, she accelerated out of his way.

Raging, he jabbed at his guns, sent cannon fire like hate at her, hot and savage, frantic for destruction. One entire barrage got her, skimming open the metal skin of her side, spilling atmosphere and debris into the vacuum. But that wasn’t enough to kill her.

He knew it wasn’t enough because she kept returning his fire until she pulled out of range.

And she hit him.

He didn’t have time to assess the damage: he had to get moving, had to get
Bright Beauty
under thrust before his attacker could turn. Fiercely, he brought her back to life, ignited her engines.

He knew his ship. She was
his
, and he’d taken care of her intimately for years. When his thrusters roared alive, he knew instantly that one of them had been hurt. It stuttered and choked, sending a terrible shudder through the hull.

That last hit had holed one of his thruster tubes.

The side-blast would make
Bright Beauty
almost impossible to control.

He tried: brutally, desperately, he tried. Ignoring the strain on his body, his heart, the strain on Morn, the strain on every suture of
Bright Beauty’s
skin and every weld of her frame, he fought for speed and control, wrestled with the side-blast for his life.

It was no good. He couldn’t do it. It would have taken all his skill just to run her in a straight line at a limp. While his attacker turned and scanned him and studied the situation and then started back toward him to finish him off, he accomplished nothing except a wild cartwheel into the dark, an off-center spin that made
Bright Beauty
completely unmanageable. Now if he tried for speed the only thing he would do was rip his own mind away so that he would be unconscious when he died.

He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how to fail and die, but that was his only alternative. While
Bright Beauty
reeled out of control like this, he couldn’t so much as fire his guns. They were useless. And he knew his enemy was closing on him, knew it without a glance at scan—which was hopelessly confused in any case. By the time he succeeded at pulling his ship out of her spin, Nick Succorso would be ready to blast him to dust.

Only because
Bright Beauty’s
motion was so painful, he struggled with it. He shut down the engine with the damaged tube, then used braking against the spin. But when her screens cleared, he saw that he’d done nothing except make life easier for his enemy.

The other ship was in position: poised; primed.

For the second time, he found himself staring down the pitiless gullet of enemy cannon.

The sight made him want to weep.

There was nothing he could do. All his anger and inspiration were gone, expended. His attacker was within range now, but it wasn’t worth the trouble to fire at her. He might be able to scar her a little, that was all. A few scars wouldn’t prevent her from eviscerating him and his ship and everything he’d ever wanted.

Abruptly, a communication channel crackled.

“Captain Thermo-pile.”

Nick Succorso. Of course.

“You’re beaten. Remember that. I warned you.”

Angus had the distinct impression Nick was laughing at him.

Without another shot,
Captain’s Fancy
shifted course and started to pull away.

He couldn’t believe it. He stared at his displays, his readouts. His cameras couldn’t see far enough to be sure; but all his sensors agreed with each other.
Captain’s Fancy
had turned her back on him. With taunting ease, she ran out of his reach almost immediately. He was left alone and damaged.

He felt like he’d been marooned. For the second time, he had no idea why he was alive.

CHAPTER

15

B
right Beauty’s
life-support didn’t seem to be working well enough. His mouth was full of sand. The whole inside of his head was a desert.
You’re beaten.
He wasn’t angry anymore.
Remember that.
He didn’t have any hope.
I warned you.
Something had been taken away from him—something he needed and couldn’t define and didn’t know how to live without.

His ship was crippled. He’d been gone from Com-Mine Station for less than twelve hours, but he would be lucky to get back in thirty-six.

Morn Hyland still slumped in her g-seat, deaf and blind to everything.

He couldn’t afford to have
Bright Beauty
fixed. If he reached Com-Mine in one piece, that would be as far as he went. He couldn’t make any money without using her, and she was in no condition to be used. He was trapped; there was no escape. He might as well have been marooned—

It was Morn’s fault, of course. None of this would have happened to him—or to his ship—if she hadn’t conceived a passion for Nick Succorso.

And yet he wasn’t angry.

He wanted to be angry. If he could get angry, maybe he would be able to think of something.

After staring at his screens for a long time, he keyed the parallel control to Morn’s zone implant and let her have her body back.

Trying to be angry, he didn’t look at her. Instead, he let his hurt, numb thoughts wander to the question of how much she remembered, how much she knew about what had happened. She’d been in the grip of her gap-sick vision, the message from the universe commanding self-destruction, when he activated her zone implant. Had she been lost in mad clarity all this time? Was she still sick? Or had she been capable of seeing, absorbing, understanding?

She twisted against her seat, stretched her muscles, studied her console and the displays. Involuntarily he turned to watch her. Her features were pale and concentrated. Then, by degrees, horror crept into her face—the horror he recognized.

In a stark and absolute whisper, she asked, “Did I do that?”

He should have let her believe she was responsible. That would be worse than anything physical he could do to her. She was horrified of him, of course, revolted to the core and helpless; but to fear herself like that, to be revolted again at herself like that, to be helpless against her own destructiveness—that would be worse. It would be as bad as what he’d been striving for until the moment when she and Nick first saw each other—as bad as finding in herself the knowledge that she needed what he did to her and loved it.

She deserved to believe she was responsible.

He couldn’t do it; he had no idea why. Part of his brain was still planning what he would say to pin the blame on her as he replied, “Succorso got us. A trap—there was no supply ship. You can see the damage.” Her console would give her all the details she needed.

For several moments she didn’t say anything. Her relief was so strong that she seemed unable to think. But then, slowly, she began to frown.

Keeping her voice neutral, she asked, “Why are we still alive?”

Angus shrugged as if he were the one who was helpless. “He let us go.”

She had to consider that for a while: even in her condition, she could see it didn’t make sense. Nick attacked because he wanted to kill Angus. Then why did he leave
Bright Beauty
alive? He set his trap so that he could rescue Morn. Then why didn’t he? Why did he risk killing her?

Nevertheless something made sense to her; Angus could read her expression well enough to know it when she reached a conclusion.

Carefully she cleared her throat and said, “You’re beaten.”

Oh, yes.

“He beat you.”

Yes.

“You’ll be lucky if you can make this thing crawl back to Station.”

The words were fierce, almost vindictive; she might have been gloating. But she didn’t sound that way. Her tone was too flat, too well-controlled. If anything, she sounded a little sad, as if she, too, had been hurt in some way.

Trying
to be angry, he growled, “Proud of him, aren’t you. You think that fucker’s some kind of hero.
Beat
me. You’re counting the minutes until you two”—he had no words strong enough—“until you can screw him.”

Abruptly, she licked her lips; she appeared to have trouble swallowing. “Angus.” She’d never used his name before. “Angus, listen to me.

“I can save you.”

He thought his heart was going to stop beating.

“I’ll testify for you. When you go back to Com-Mine, they’ll charge you with illegal departure. I’ll support you. I’m not much of a cop anymore, but I’ve still got my id tag. I’ll tell them you left on my orders. And I’ll tell them there was no supply ship. It was a hoax—that other ship set it up. I’ll tell them to arrest Nick Succorso. I can’t save your ship, but I can save you.”

Tell them? Turn on Nick Succorso? Give up that piece of meat for me? Impossible. Angus felt sure he was losing his mind. For me?

“Just give me the control.” Her voice was husky, full of need. “The zone-implant control.”

Then he understood. Shit, how he wished he could be angry! She wanted the control. It wasn’t for him. Nothing was for him. She wanted all that power for herself. Power
over
herself—power to be whatever she wanted. No gap-sickness. No fear: immune to fear. And no consequences for all the harm he’d done her. The perfect cop. The perfect lover. As close as human flesh could come to immortality.

He’d broken her in ways he hadn’t anticipated. Her damage was as profound as
Bright Beauty’s.

He had trouble seeing. His eyes ran and wouldn’t stop. “You’re crazy,” he rasped as if he were weeping. “That’s as illegal as what I did to you. You’re a cop. Your whole family will be discredited, heroic Captain Davies Hyland and his reputation shot to hell.”

She reacted bitterly. “What does that matter?” she retorted. “They’re
dead.”

Angus tried a different tack.

“You aren’t thinking straight. You’re a
cop.
It’s worse when a cop breaks the law. They’ll crucify you. Mandatory death penalty. They’ll find out. They have to find out. And then you’ll be finished.”

Behind his tears, he could see her in lockup; see her waiting to be executed, vaporized. As precious as
Bright Beauty.

“I’ll lose my ship.”

“You can’t save it,” she shot back, suddenly angry, more than a little desperate. “I can handle Station Security. And the UMCP. I’ll think of a way. But
nothing
can save your ship. It’s too badly broken. We’ll need a miracle just to get back to Com-Mine alive.

“Please. Give me the control.” Now she was pleading nakedly. “I’m not going to use it against you. I need it to heal.”

He tried to clear his vision. Softly he said, “And give up my ship. That’s the deal, isn’t it. You’ll save me. If I let you have the control. But I have to give up my ship.”

My life.

She nodded. After a moment, she replied, “What else have you got to bargain with?”

At last, something like his old energy came back to him. Roughly he undid the straps and pushed his bulk out of his g-seat. He needed to be angry at her one last time, needed to hate her the way he’d always hated her, the way he hated everyone.

He went toward her.

Clamping one hand on the armrest of her seat, bracing his feet on the deck, he struck her a blow like the one which had felled Nick, a blow with the whole weight of his existence behind it. If her seat hadn’t absorbed some of the impact, she might have been knocked unconscious. He might have broken her neck.

“Bitch. I’ll never give up my ship.”

Red welled in her cheek; blood trickled from the cuts of her teeth inside her mouth. Pain and shock glazed her eyes: for a moment, she couldn’t focus them.

But she made no effort to defend herself. If he wanted to hit her again, she was there.

He couldn’t do it. It was like hurting
Bright Beauty.
She was too beautiful. The stark red line of blood across her fine skin wrung his heart. He needed rage and violence, but they were gone.

“Now
you
listen to me,” he panted as if he were groaning. “It’s impossible. You couldn’t get away with it.

“Maybe you can get them to believe you ordered me to violate Center’s orders so you could come out here after Succorso. But they won’t believe anything else unless you file charges. If you don’t, your credibility’s gone. Then you’re in the same shit I am. Only you’ll be suspect for destroying
Starmaster.
If they find evidence of self-destruct, you’ll be court-martialed. They’ll find the zone implant
and
the control, and then you’re dead.

“You’ll have to file charges.

“But if you do that, you’ll have to give them my datacore. Otherwise you don’t have any evidence.” He could survive that—he could retain his life, if not his freedom—but she didn’t know that. And he had a horror of lockup. Imprisonment alone might be enough to ruin him. “You’ll end up killing me.

“And if you do all that, they’ll still find the implant and the control.

“Think
about it. After what you’ve been through, they’re going to give you a physical. They’re going to insist on it. If you resist, they’ll get suspicious—they’ll force it on you. No matter what you do, you’re dead.

“You’re going to have to play this out the way it is.

“I’m trying to save your life too.”

Now he wasn’t able to meet her dull, smoldering gaze. Slowly he pushed back to his seat. He strapped himself in. His movements were abrupt, jerky, as if he didn’t have them entirely under control; as if he could have used a zone implant himself.

“We’ve got a holed thruster tube,” he muttered. “It’ll take everything I can do just to make her run in a straight line. You’ll have to handle everything else.”

Glowering like one of the lost, he routed most of his command functions to her console. Then he concentrated all the determination he had left on making
Bright Beauty
go where he wanted.

He knew Morn would do her part. What choice did she have?

But he also knew what he’d done to her. He’d destroyed her last hope. And he’d hit her again, after all his gentleness; after his gentleness had almost persuaded her he could be reached.

He understood the consequences.

Now she had no choice but to help destroy him.