The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (106 page)

Even
his bones shook. His brain itself seemed to tremble. Unsteadily he asked, “What
do you want to do?”

The
muscles at the corner of Mikka’s jaw knotted. “Get her. Get her now. Before she
fixes targ on us.”

“We can’t.”
Bryony Hyland’s daughter.
“Too many asteroids in the way.”
If we can
stand being that ashamed of ourselves.
“We don’t have a clear line of fire.”

Soar
also had no clear line.

“And if
we try,” he went on urgently, fearfully, “
Calm Horizons
’ll
see
it. She’ll know where we are. Just this much rock won’t stop that proton cannon
from reaching us.”

Mikka
turned a glare like a curse on him. “Then what can we do?”

His
voice shook like his hands. “If
Calm Horizons
uses her matter cannon, I
can keep her from hitting us once. We have a dispersion field — it breaks up
that kind of blast. But we can’t face a super-light proton beam. We’ll have to
run.”

“Run
where?
”
Mikka snapped back.

Davies
had no idea. “Anywhere. Out past
Punisher
. Maybe she’s on our side.
Maybe she’ll try to cover us.”

“From a
proton cannon?” Mikka rasped. “No chance. One good hit, and that gun’ll smash
both of us.”

Nevertheless
she bent to her console and began designing hypothetical trajectories, hunting
for a viable route through the last rocks; a course which would allow
Trumpet
to emerge from the swarm as much as possible in
Punisher’s
shadow.

The gap
scout truly could not fire at
Soar
: scan and targ agreed on that. Too
many obstacles. The same stones which protected her also paralysed her.

But
Soar
must have spotted her by now;
must
have. And Sorus Chatelaine worked
for the Amnion. Even if reflection distorted the precision of her instruments,
she could transmit what she knew of
Trumpet’s
position to
Calm
Horizons
.

Then
the Amnioni would be able to triangulate —

What
was the lag? A second? Less? How much time did
Trumpet
have before
Soar
talked to
Calm Horizons
? Before the defensive acted on Sorus
Chatelaine’s information?

“That
rock!” Davies croaked suddenly. “The biggest one!” He pointed frantically at
the scan display. “Get behind it! Before
Calm Horizons
fires!”

Maybe
Mikka understood him. Or maybe she’d already grasped the danger for herself.
Hard and fast, she stabbed at the helm keys. Thrust kicked through the ship,
roaring like a furnace, as Mikka scrambled for the occlusion of the largest
remaining asteroid.

An
instant later the Amnioni’s proton cannon spoke.

During
the space between one nanosecond and the next, the asteroid shrugged, staggered,
and transformed itself to scree.

Debris
tore at
Trumpet’s
shields like a barrage. When it passed, it left the
gap scout exposed to open space; effectively naked in the face of another
onslaught.

For a
moment Davies couldn’t comprehend why
Calm Horizons
didn’t fire again
immediately. Then he understood. If she turned her other guns away from
Punisher
,
the cruiser would smash her. And she needed time to recharge her proton cannon.

A
minute? Two?

Trumpet
had that much longer to live.

SORUS

I
t could be done.

The
helm first was good; one of the best. Even though the ship had lost a 30° arc
of navigational thrust as well as one of her main tubes, he performed miracles
with the jets she had left. And her surviving enemies were out of scan range;
beyond knowledge. If either
Trumpet
or
Free Lunch
still lived,
they weren’t near enough to pose a threat.
Soar
would be able to reach
the co-ordinates Milos Taverner had provided; take up the position
Calm
Horizons
wanted.

Limping
and sputtering, close to ruin, she moved tortuously through the long seethe of
the stones like a cripple looking for death.

Sorus
Chatelaine had her own ideas about that, but she kept them to herself; hid them
in her heart and wrapped silence around them so that they wouldn’t show.

Taverner
stood in front of her, as uncompromising as a statue. For the time being, he’d
finished talking to
Calm Horizons
. Instead of attending to his SCRT, he
watched Sorus and the bridge: absorbing everything scan, data, and helm showed
on the screens; noting every order Sorus gave. Nevertheless his fingers
continued to tap the keys of his odd device as if he were recording a log of
what was said and done. Maybe he was preparing the testimony he would present
to the Amnion Mind/Union so that his actions could be judged.

Sorus
snorted to herself. She was sure that she and her ship would be judged long
before the Mind/Union learned what had happened here.

Once
again she checked her maintenance status readouts. Some time ago one of the
ship’s lifts had moved — the one nearest the breached cargo bay. More stress
damage? Probably. Like thruster tubes and scan vanes — like Sorus herself —
lifts could malfunction or break under enough pressure.

Casually,
dishonestly, she asked Taverner, “How does that thing work? It’s hard for me to
believe you’re in instantaneous contact with
Calm Horizons
.”

Intervening
rock would have baffled any ordinary transmission. According to Taverner,
however, his SCRT was far from ordinary. It sent messages back and forth, he’d
claimed,
without measurable delay.
And he’d said it had a range of 2.71
light-years.

The way
he looked at her suggested that he’d forgotten how to shrug. “It functions by
means of crystalline resonance,” he answered without inflection. “Do you doubt
that I have described its capabilities accurately?”

She
shook her head. “You aren’t stupid enough to lie to me about it.” Not under
these conditions. “I’m just — amazed. I didn’t know that kind of communication
was possible.” She may have been looking for an oblique reassurance that
Calm
Horizons
was indeed “heavily engaged” by a UMCP cruiser.

To
disguise her intentions, she added, “This whole job would have been easier if
we’d put one of those boxes aboard
Trumpet
. Then we would have known
where she was all the time. We could have forced that poor kid to tell us what
she was doing, instead of expecting him to sabotage her.”

She was
morally certain that Ciro Vasaczk would have tried to carry out her orders, if
he’d had the chance. Still she suspected that he’d been betrayed by his own
distress.
Trumpet’s
people had noticed his terror and prevented him from
doing what she’d instructed.

“That
was not possible, Captain Chatelaine,” Taverner replied. “Such devices are” —
language failed him momentarily — “difficult to produce.
Calm Horizons
could not have supplied us with another, and this one could not be spared.”

Apparently
he’d taken her comments literally. Very little of his former humanity remained
accessible to him.

She was
counting on that.

“How
are you doing, helm?” she inquired so that the Amnioni wouldn’t say anything
else. “Is it getting any easier?”

“Not
bad, Captain,” the man replied, stolid with concentration. “I wouldn’t say it’s
getting easier, but I’m getting better at handling it.”

“Do you
need rest? I don’t want to relieve you, but your second can probably cope if
you want a break.”

“I’m
fine, Captain.” He glanced up from his board long enough to meet her gaze,
smile faintly. “This isn’t easy. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else.”

Sorus
cocked an eyebrow. Some hint in his eyes, some echo in his voice, gave her the
impression that he, too, understood, that she and the woman on scan weren’t the
only ones who’d begun to hope.

If targ
understood as well —

Hiding
grimly from Taverner’s scrutiny, Sorus turned to scan. “Anything I should know
about?”

“It’s
not clear yet, Captain.” Like helm, scan kept her attention fixed on her board.
“But we’re close enough — I think I’m getting hints of a battle. Some of my
readings don’t look like static. If
Calm Horizons
and that UMCP warship
are firing their matter cannon, maybe what I see are discontinuities leaking
into the swarm.

“I’ll
know in another five minutes.”

“
Calm
Horizons
and the UMCP warship are firing,” Taverner pronounced
unnecessarily.

“In
that case, targ,” Sorus said quietly, “it’s time to charge the guns.”

The
targ first nodded without speaking.

Five
minutes. Less?

Yes,
less.

“Captain,”
scan announced abruptly, “that’s definitely battle emission. We’re almost
there. We should reach the fringe of the swarm in” — she tapped keys — “call it
twenty minutes. We’ll be able to see
Calm Horizons
and the cruiser from
there.”

If
Trumpet
was alive, maybe they would be able to see her as well.

Sorus
touched her intercom; warned her people that they were going back into battle.
Taverner wanted her to help
Calm Horizons
against the cruiser. And to
help kill
Trumpet
. She intended to show him that she was ready to obey.

“Captain,”
communications called suddenly, “we’re receiving a transmission!”

Memories
of Succorso’s attack tightened around Sorus’ heart. “Source?” she demanded.

Succorso
had outplayed her in the swarm. She hadn’t forgotten that — and she hadn’t
forgiven him.

“Can’t
tell,” the woman replied. “There’s too much reflection. We’re picking up the
signal from three or four directions at once.”

A
transmission from an EVA suit wouldn’t bounce. It would be too close —

Sorus
let herself breathe for a moment before she asked, “What does it say? Is it
coded?”

“For
compression, not encryption,” communications said. “There’s a lot of data here.”
A moment later she tensed. “Captain, it’s from Vector Shaheed! Aboard
Trumpet
.”

Taverner
turned away from Sorus as if he pivoted on oil, faced communications and the
rest of the bridge. His fingers sped on the keys of his SCRT.

So the
gap scout had escaped the black hole. Taverner was right. Under other
circumstances, Sorus would have hated that. But now it pleased her.

It
suited her hopes.

Studying
a readout, communications summarised the transmission as her computer decoded
it.

“He
says he’s developed the formula for a mutagen immunity drug.” Involuntarily she
glanced at Taverner; snatched her gaze back to her board. “My God, the formula’s
here!
He
included
it. And a whole series of test designs to prove
it works.”

Swallowing
hard, she concluded, “Captain,
Trumpet
must be trying to get this to VI.”

“Triangulate,”
Milos ordered flatly. He moved to the communications station as if to ensure
that he would be obeyed.

“I can’t,”
communications snapped at him. “I already said there’s too much reflection.”

“Scan,”
Sorus put in, “is the swarm thin enough for that transmission to leak out?”

The
scan first chewed her lip. “Hard to tell, Captain. Are they ahead of us? Behind
us? Maybe —”

“This
signal,” Taverner intoned like a sentence of death, “can be received beyond the
swarm.
Calm Horizons
has heard it.”

Disaster.
The ruin of everything the Amnion had risked by sending
Soar
after the
gap scout; by committing
Calm Horizons
to an act of war.

From
the communications station, he confronted Sorus again. “Captain Chatelaine,
Trumpet
must be stopped.”

“Why?”
she sneered. “We can’t exactly erase that transmission. It’s out there now. You
ordered me not to kill her when we had the chance. This whole exercise has been
wasted.”

He didn’t
hesitate.
Calm Horizons
had already given him his answer.

“Gap
drive implosion,” he pronounced passionlessly, “emits electromagnetic static
sufficient to disrupt all microwave coherence. The volume of space affected is
limited only by the power and hysteresis settings of the drive imploded.
Because the static crosses the gap, the area affected is many times greater
than the distance a waveform travels in a comparable time.

“When
Trumpet
has been destroyed,
Calm Horizons
will implode her gap drive.” If he
felt any emotion, his alien voice was unable to show it. “This transmission
will be effaced from the Massif-5 system.”