The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (101 page)

“Too
long?” Dolph made the inquiry sound impersonal; almost abstract.

The
scan officer strove to be clear. “Too long since the defensive fired her proton
cannon. She’s been shooting at us every 118 seconds. Exactly. I assume that’s
as often as she can. But it’s been three minutes now. Three and a half. She
hasn’t fired.”

Hasn’t
fired? Anxiety twisted like nausea in Min’s guts. After three and a half
minutes?

Dolph
straightened himself at his station, clasped his hands on the arms of his
g-seat. “In that case, Sergei,” he pronounced as if he were enjoying himself;
as if all his troubles had been lifted from his shoulders, “I think we’d better
carry out Director Donner’s orders at full burn. If a Behemoth-class Amnion
defensive isn’t using her proton cannon to defend herself, it must be because
she’s about to acquire another target.”

Trumpet
had been built full of surprises. But nothing the gap scout carried
— or could carry — would be able to protect her from a super-light proton beam.

Only
Punisher
could do that.

And
die.

SORUS

T
averner had told her to do it;
ordered
her. Even though she’d
warned him it was a trick. She’d shouted at him that
Trumpet
was
shamming; there was no sabotage; Succorso had been too far ahead of her; if the
gap scout struck an asteroid and looked dead, she was doing it deliberately to
lure
Soar
in. But Taverner had insisted that the risk was worth taking.
That any chance of capturing
Trumpet’s
people alive was worth taking.
When
Soar
had finally penetrated the strange storm of distortion — when
scan had at last reacquired the gap scout, seen her playing dead — he’d
forbidden Sorus to kill the small ship while she could.

This
was the result.

Without
warning, another ship had appeared. Scan had recognised her at once: she was
known from Billingate’s operational transmissions.

Free
Lunch
. Sorus knew nothing about her except her
name. But she’d escaped Billingate scant hours ahead of Thanatos Minor’s
destruction.

Instantly
Free Lunch
opened fire, hitting
Soar
hard; straining her sinks
and shields to their limits.
Trumpet
had allies in the most
incomprehensible places.
Soar
was forced to throw all her energies into
the battle. Otherwise she wouldn’t survive.

.
Barrage after barrage, the stranger hammered her. She fired back frantically.
But she’d already suffered too much damage. Succorso had hurt her; the ruin of
Thanatos Minor had hurt her. Despite her best efforts to defend herself, she
was foundering.

And
then, just as Sorus had predicted,
Trumpet
came back to life.

The gap
scout must have risked cold ignition. That was the only way she could have
brought her thrust back to power and started moving so quickly. Staggering
while her tubes heated, she pulled off from the asteroid —

—
pulled off in a tight arc which carried her straight into the field of fire
between the two combatants; straight under
Soar’s
and
Free Lunch’s
guns.

Thermopyle
must have lost his mind. Or
Trumpet
was running on automatic, following
a course which had been pre-set before
Free Lunch
appeared.

Which
meant he was busy elsewhere; too busy to manage helm himself.

Busy
setting another trap —

“Destroy
Trumpet
,” Taverner demanded. Supported by the command console directly
in front of Sorus, his alien strength held him as stable as a post. His hand on
his SCRT didn’t waver. Shades covered his inhuman eyes: they revealed nothing.
His tone had become as inflexible as his mind. Nevertheless she couldn’t
mistake the note of urgency in his instructions. “Destroy her now. The other
vessel will not grant you a second opportunity. And she must not be taken by
our enemies.”

Sorus
obeyed, even though turning her guns off her attacker was as good as suicide. “You
heard him, targ,” she snapped. “Get the gap scout. Hit her
now
.”

In a
rush of keys, a flurry of desperation, targ did what she told him.

She
obeyed Taverner — but not because she feared him. She’d left that old
apprehension behind; or it’d been burned out of her by hope and extremity.
Soar
was too badly hurt; couldn’t absorb much more punishment. Nothing remained
in Sorus Chatelaine’s heart except her prayers.

She
obeyed because she thought she knew what was going to happen next.

And
again she was right. The instant
Soar’s
matter cannon spoke, another
wild tsunami of distortion struck: so much random boson fury that every
spectrum which
Soar’s
sensors and sifters could receive dissolved in
chaos, as if the entire material existence of
Free Lunch
and
Trumpet
and the surrounding swarm were a quantum joke.

The gap
scout must have done that. She had a defence against matter cannon. The cops
were developing weapons Sorus had never heard of. Weapons she could hardly
imagine.

Nevertheless
she was ready.
Trumpet
had already produced too many surprises. Sorus
didn’t intend to be caught by another.

A
fraction of a second after scan failed, she shouted at helm, “Veer off! Get us
out of here — hard and fast!”

She’d
watched the man work for years: she knew he was good. He didn’t need to be told
that he could trust scan data which was only a few seconds old to help him pick
his way through the hurtling torrent of rocks.

Instantly
thrust slammed her to the side; strained her ribs to the cracking point on the
arm of her g-seat. At the edges her vision seemed to drain away into darkness
as thick as blood. Around her, her people fought g to run their boards.
Taverner was forced to flex his knees in order to hold his position. The
pressure snatched his eyeshades off his face, shattered them to splinters on
one of the bulkheads.

While
Free
Lunch
and
Trumpet
were as blind as
Soar
, Sorus’ ship swung
away from the battle. If
Free Lunch
fired again, scan couldn’t see it —
and the ship didn’t feel it.

As
Soar
finished her swerve and came to a new heading, Sorus settled more
comfortably into the support of her g-seat. Another few seconds, that was all
she needed: if the ship burned for a few more seconds without a fatal
miscalculation, a killing collision, scan would begin to clear. Then she could
look around her; estimate her chances of turning in time to intercept
Trumpet’s
escape beyond the covering fire of the gap scout’s ally. If helm kept the ship
safe that long; if Sorus could go on breathing, resist unconsciousness, for
those seconds —

Without
warning
Soar
faltered as if she’d stumbled into a wall. Her thrust
seemed to sag, leak away. Sorus feared for an instant that the ship had holed a
tube. But at the same time g increased. Between one heartbeat and the next
Sorus felt her weight double.

“Gravity!”
data croaked. “Jesus, that’s
gravity!
There must be a black hole back
there!”

A black
hole? Here? All of a sudden? Sorus couldn’t understand it — and didn’t try.
Black hole or not, its pull was tremendous. And any force strong enough to suck
at
Soar
this hard would affect everything around her. Already metal
thunder pounded through the ship as asteroids of all sizes hammered the hull,
trying to drive straight through
Soar
in their hurry to obey the hunger
which summoned them.

If she
couldn’t break free, break free
fast
, she might be dead before the black
hole took her. The rush of rock might smash her to pieces.

For no
reason Sorus could imagine, Taverner said in a constricted tone, “An induced
singularity. A weapon.

“We — I”
— he had difficulty referring to himself — “I have heard of such things.
Singularity grenades. When I was human. They were spoken of in rumours. It was
said that they were impractical. Our research concurs.”

Impractical?
Sorus raged. If a black hole ate her ship, no one aboard would give
a shit whether it was
impractical
.

Humankind
endured by being impractical.

Uselessly
she noticed that the screens were clearing. The force behind her drank down
bosons even faster than it swallowed asteroids.
Soar
would be able to
watch herself die.

“Full
power, helm,” Sorus ordered urgently, pitching her voice to carry through the
thunder. A vice of g held her chest: she sounded like she was trying to scream.
“Don’t fight it directly — angle around it. If it’s a black hole, maybe we can
pick up enough lateral velocity to sling ourselves loose.”

That
would expose
Soar’s
flank to the stone torrent; make her a bigger
target. But it gave her her best chance to escape.

“Stop
charging,” Sorus gasped at targ. “Feed your power back to the drive. Matter
cannon won’t save us now.”

If
anything saved the ship, it would be the fact that she’d turned away before the
black hole came into existence.

The
thunder swelled to a din — an endless battery, stone on metal; slower than
cannon, but no less fatal. She couldn’t hear. In another moment she wouldn’t be
able to think. G sang in her bones like a subsonic drill: she felt them turning
to powder. Her skin seemed to flow and gather like hot paraffin. How long
before a rock massive enough to open the hull landed? How long before the event
horizon caught her; before hunger and time carried her backward to her death?

She
didn’t want to die like this. She couldn’t move her hands, had no chance
whatsoever to reach the impact pistol at her belt. And she’d sworn,
sworn
,
that she would kill Milos Taverner before she died. Blast him straight in his
fat face — one small payment for the long debt of harm she owed the Amnion.

She
didn’t want to die like this!

Prayer
—

— was
sometimes answered.

Slowly
at first, almost too slowly to be felt,
Soar
began to win free.

 _

 _

Curving around the depths
of the gravity well, she took on centrifugal inertia to combat the pull. At
last the black hole’s own force helped swing her hard enough to carry outward.
Scant moments snatched away from the dark by will and yearning gradually drew
Sorus Chatelaine’s command out of the well.

The
hammering eased as gravity receded. Fewer asteroids answered the singularity’s
hunger. They answered less avidly. Sorus was sure that one whole side of her
ship had been flattened; that every gun, antennae, port, receptor, and vane on
that flank had been beaten to metal ruin. Virtually every damage system and
warning
Soar
possessed cried alarm. Yet the decompression klaxon was
silent. The ship may have been battered almost to scrap, but she hadn’t been
breached.

As g
let her go, Sorus started breathing again. For a moment the return of blood to
her eyes and brain overloaded her optic nerves. Then her vision struggled like
scan out of a phosphene storm, and she could see again.

Blips
on all the screens shouted amber panic. Her command indicators and readouts
burned fearfully, as if her board were full of St. Elmo’s fire. But
Soar
was
alive.

Helm
was already at work, firing unmodulated bursts of thrust to control the ship’s
headlong trajectory.
Soar
staggered as she plunged, yawing and pitching
while helm fought to impose a course. And a moment later scan resumed feeding
useful data to the helm board. After that his efforts improved. One last clang
ended the assault of rocks.

Taverner
remained in front of the command station, braced there with one hand under
Sorus’ console. With his eyeshades gone, she could see his alien eyes.

He wasn’t
looking at her. Instead he studied the incomprehensible readouts on his SCRT
while his fingers sped across the keys. Talking to
Calm Horizons
.
Instantaneous communications. If he suffered from the effects of so much g, he
didn’t show it.

Sorus
decided to ignore him. Whatever he was doing — whatever he wanted — could wait.

Sipping
air past the pain in her chest, she breathed, “Data, give me damage.” Then,
because she hurt too much to concentrate on everything at once, she added, “Keep
it simple. Just the highlights for now.”

Blips
on the command board signalled for her attention as well. They, too, could
wait.

“Not
good, Captain,” data croaked. Roughly he scrubbed his eyes; squinted at his
readouts. “Shit, I can hardly see.

“No
decompression,” he reported, “but we took a hell of a beating.” He recited a
list of vanes, guns, receptors. “All gone. We’re deaf, dumb, and blind on that
side. Structural damage to both hulls. Metal stress way past our tolerances.”
After a momentary hitch, he went on, “We’ve lost a 30° arc of manoeuvring
thrust. And one of our main tubes was crushed flat.