The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (108 page)

The
Amnioni didn’t argue. The displays made it obvious that scan and targ were
telling the truth. Rapidly he tapped new data into his SCRT.

Sorus
found that she was nodding again. She had the impression that she’d been
holding her breath for some time.

That
was important. Nod. Hold her breath. Keep herself under control. Until
Calm
Horizons
knew
Trumpet’s
position exactly — until the big defensive
attacked the gap scout — any action would be premature; fatal.

Trumpet
had set herself behind a substantial piece of rock, obviously
hoping to block
Calm Horizons’
fire. The asteroid was four times the
size of the gap scout. Was it big enough to protect the ship from a super-light
proton blast? Just one?

Yes.

Good.

Sorus
wondered how long she would have to hold her breath.

Then
she knew.

The
defensive’s proton gun blazed. Without transition the asteroid shattered,
hailing shards like shrapnel at the gap scout.

Trumpet’s
shields held. She survived.

But now
she had no cover. As soon as
Calm Horizons
recharged her cannon,
Trumpet
was finished.

“Captain!”
scan called, “the cruiser’s increased her rate of fire. Matter cannon, lasers,
torpedoes — she’s throwing everything she has at
Calm Horizons
!”

Trying
to defend
Trumpet
.

Fine.

Now.

Sorus
let herself breathe.

“Oh,
Milos,” she murmured sweetly. “Milos Taverner, you lump of Amnion shit. I have
something for you.”

Her
tone must have touched a nerve in the human residue of his mind; an atavistic
instinct for panic. Despite his growing inflexibility, he turned sharply,
nearly flung himself around to face her. His fingers danced on his SCRT.

In one
motion Sorus swept up her impact pistol and fired straight at his face.

His
skull exploded like a smashed melon. Grey brain and greenish blood splashed
past the communications station, hit the screens, spread like ruin across the
displays. Carried by the blow, he tumbled backward; crumpled against the
screens; rebounded drifting in zero g over the bridge stations. More blood
formed a streaming green corona around his carcass until it made contact with
his shipsuit and skin. Then it stuck to him, prevented from spreading outward
by surface tension.

Got
you, Sorus panted, you God damn, treacherous, murdering son of a
bitch!

Her
people stared at her. Data and targ looked shocked. Communications seemed to
fear that some of Taverner’s blood might have touched her. But scan’s face
shone with savage glee. Helm grinned as if he wanted to start cheering.

In an
instant of pressure on the firing stud of her handgun, Sorus had changed everything.

“Now,”
she announced to the bridge. “This is our chance.”

She
sounded wonderfully calm. “Everything we need to get away from the fucking
Amnion is on
Calm Horizons
. All we have to do is help that cruiser beat
her. It doesn’t matter how many charges the cops are holding against us. If we
help them beat an Amnion defensive in human space, we’re heroes. At the very
least they’ll let us salvage anything we need.

“We
have until
Calm Horizons
finishes charging her proton cannon. Maybe a
minute. Let’s not waste it.”

Calm
Horizons
absorbed the cruiser’s onslaught too
easily. The defensive must have cross-linked her sinks so that she could use
them all to bleed off force from the point of impact.

In that
case, she was vulnerable on this side.

“Targ,”
Sorus ordered clearly, “I want you to hit that Amnion bastard. Hit her with
everything we’ve got.

“Hit
her
now.
”

The man
gaped at Sorus for a few seconds. His eyes were full of terror and death.

But
then he gulped, “
Yes
, Captain,” and his hands sprang at his board.

Yes.

Victory
or death.

A
moment later Sorus Chatelaine’s only hope spread sizzling echoes through the
hull as
Soar
opened fire.

MIN

Helpless in one of the
support personnel g-seats, Min Donner watched
Punisher
fight her way
toward an intersection with the line of fire between the encroaching Amnion
defensive and that part of the asteroid swarm where the cruiser’s sensors had
spotted a kinetic reflection anomaly.

If
Punisher
could reach that intersection in time — if she could put herself between the big
defensive and the place where
Trumpet
was most likely to emerge from the
rocks — she might be able to give the gap scout enough covering fire to escape.

She
still had a long way to go. Twenty-five minutes, according to estimates posted
on one of the displays. Too slow. The alien had silenced her proton cannon.
Obviously she expected to acquire a new target almost at once. Certainly not
twenty-five minutes from now.

Yet
even Min Donner, with all her fierceness, her instinct for extreme actions,
knew
Punisher
couldn’t go any faster. Patrice on helm had to work his
board like a madman simply to gain this much velocity without sacrificing the
evasive manoeuvres which frustrated the Amnioni’s cannon — or the rotational
thrust which enabled targ to maintain a steady assault. Min feared that if his
burdens were increased one iota, he might crack.

Secretly
she believed that she herself might have already broken if she were in his
place.

The
limitations which slowed
Punisher
— which might cause her to fail — were
human ones. No ship could outperform the people who ran her.

At the
best of times, Min had an uneasy relationship with mortality. Now she
positively hated it. Humankind needed a better defence than the one
Punisher
had provided so far.

Apparently
Dolph Ubikwe felt otherwise. If his faults and failings bothered him, he didn’t
show it. Preternaturally secure in his g-seat, he rode the thrashing cruiser as
if nothing could trouble him. His orders were cheerful: his manner, almost
merry. At intervals he produced soft, subterranean sounds like tuned groans, as
if he were humming to himself.

He
might have been a tension sink, absorbing strain and apprehension and bleeding
them away so that the people around him could concentrate.

“News,
Porson,” he rumbled equably as
Punisher
strained ahead. “I want news. I
get bored if I’m not inundated with information. Where is
Trumpet
?”

“I can’t
see her yet, Captain,” the scan officer admitted apologetically. “All these
vectors — the computer has to collate too many new co-ordinates with too many
different instruments. We’re giving it fits. Half my readouts show error
alerts.

“Sorry,
Captain.”

Captain
Ubikwe grumbled or hummed. His fingers tapped the edge of his console. “Then
what does that damn defensive see?” he countered rhetorically. “How does she
know so much more than we do? So what if she has better scan? We’ve had time to
catch up. If she can locate
Trumpet
, why can’t we?”

Maybe,
Min refused to say aloud, somebody aboard
Trumpet
is talking to that
Amnioni. Maybe they’ve already given her their position. Maybe Nick bloody
Succorso is even more treasonous than I thought.

That
probably wasn’t true.
Punisher
would almost certainly hear any message
Trumpet
sent. No tight-beam transmission could get through all that rock: only a general
broadcast would bounce around enough to leak out of the swarm.

Despite
the cruiser’s distance from the region of the kinetic reflection anomaly, she
was fractionally closer to the outer asteroids than the alien was. If anything,
she should be able to hear better than her enemy —

Matter
cannon fire echoed like scorching in the hull. The sinks gave off a keen,
palpable whine, as if they were crying. G kicked the ship from side to side, up
and down, around in circles. Space-sickness tugged at the lining of Min’s
stomach, despite her experience and training.

Out of
the confusion, Cray barked, “Captain, I’m picking up a transmission!”

Oh,
shit.

Dolph
cocked his head. “VI? I hope it’s good news. I could use some.”

“No,
Captain,” Cray gulped as she studied her readouts. “Down there.”

He
opened his mouth lugubriously. “What, from the swarm?”

“Aye,
Captain.”

He made
a show of swallowing his astonishment. “Well, don’t keep me in suspense. Who’s
sending it?”

Cray
gaped at her board for a couple of seconds, then wheeled her station to face
his.

“Captain,
it’s from Vector Shaheed.” Her voice was hoarse from overuse. “Aboard
Trumpet
.”

Dolph
steepled his fingers, pursed his mouth. “Maybe,” he mused, “that’s how our
friend out there knows where she is. We’d better look into this.

“What
does Dr. Shaheed have to say for himself?”

Cray
bent to her readouts again. “He isn’t talking to the Amnioni,” she reported. “Or
he says he isn’t. He claims this is a general broadcast. For anyone who can
hear him.

“Captain”
— she struggled to clear her throat — “he says he’s developed a mutagen
immunity drug. He says he’s been working on it ever since Intertech shut down
their research. Now he’s succeeded. Then —” Cray’s voice failed momentarily. “Then
he gives a formula.”

A
formula?
Christ! Min knew how the communications officer felt. She had difficulty
containing her own amazement.

A
mutagen immunity drug,
the
drug, the one Hashi had developed from Vector
Shaheed’s research. The one Hashi had supplied to Nick Succorso so that
Succorso could play Hashi’s games with the Amnion.

Trumpet
was broadcasting the
formula?

Cray
hadn’t paused. As soon as she mastered herself, she explained, “That’s just the
first part of the message. But all the rest is test designs. To help whoever
hears him prove his formula is effective.”

Min
should have been filled with dismay. Hadn’t Warden agreed to suppress Intertech’s
research for a reason? Hadn’t he told her that his survival as the UMCP
director depended on his complicity with Holt Fasner? General broadcast! Surely
this was a disaster?

But
what she felt wasn’t dismay: it was an acute, visceral sense of pride. God,
this was wonderful! A mutagen immunity formula on
general broadcast.
If
Vector Shaheed had thought of this and carried it out all on his own —

No, she
didn’t believe that.
Trumpet
was too small: with Angus to help him, Nick
Succorso could too easily control everyone around him.

There
was only one person aboard who might have persuaded Nick or Angus to permit
this; only one who’d been trained in the same ethics and responsibility Min
herself served —

“After
that it all repeats,” Cray finished. “Continuous broadcast. I guess
Trumpet
is planning to beam it out as long as she can.”

A grin
stretched Captain Ubikwe’s fleshy mouth. He may actually have been amused.

“Well,
we can count on one thing, anyway,” he remarked. “Our friend as sure as shit
doesn’t want to hear
that
.

“My
congratulations, Director Donner,” he drawled over his shoulder. “When you told
me
Trumpet
was headed for a bootleg lab so Dr. Shaheed could do this, I
thought you were guessing. Remind me to be more respectful.”

Min
ignored him; hardly heard him. Her head churned with inferences and concern.

God,
had Warden planned for
this
, too? Or were
Trumpet
and all her
people completely out of control?

Morn
Hyland was aboard. Warden had planned for that. But did he know what she’d
become? Did he know what months of zone implant addiction, months of Thermopyle’s
and Succorso’s brutality, had made of her?

Did he
know that in spite of everything she was still a cop?

How
well did even Hashi Lebwohl understand Nick Succorso? Or his own creation,
Angus Thermopyle?

The
minute anyone around Massif-5 picked up
Trumpet’s
message, the Amnioni
was effectively beaten; checkmated. Even that vessel couldn’t go to war with
the whole system.

But she
could still kill
Trumpet
.

And no
one aboard the gap scout deserved to die; not scant minutes after they’d
achieved this incredible victory.

“Captain
Ubikwe.” Min’s voice was husky with emotion, but she didn’t care. “We aren’t
fast enough. We need more speed.”