The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (23 page)

Amnion
vessels in pursuit.

Morn?
Only years of training and harsh experience enabled Min to contain herself when
she saw Morn’s name. Morn was
alive!

I
have reason to think Morn Hyland may survive what’s happened to her.

Warden
had told the truth. He hadn’t abandoned Morn. Risked her, yes: let her suffer.
But not abandoned her. Apparently he’d never meant to abandon her.

I
want someone to make sure she stays alive — That means you.

He was
playing a deeper game —

Clutching
Cray’s g-seat for support, Min followed Angus’ message as it scrolled down the
readout.

Urgent,
he insisted.
The Amnion know about the mutagen
immunity drug in Nick Succorso’s possession. It is possible that they have
obtained a sample of the drug from Morn Hyland’s blood.

Morn
must have fallen into the hands of the Amnion somehow. Who rescued her? And why
was she still human? Did
Nick
, Nick
Succorso
, give her the drug?

Hashi,
you moron! Didn’t you have the brains to see this coming as soon as you trusted
a man like him?

Urgent.
Bright with phosphors, Angus’ message moved
relentlessly across the small screen.
Davies Hyland is Morn Hyland’s son,
force-grown on Enablement Station. The Amnion want him. They believe he
represents the knowledge necessary to mutate Amnion indistinguishable from
humans.

Min
ignored Cray’s small gasp of fear. She clung to the readout, unwilling to be
deflected.

Urgent,
Angus continued as if he feared no one would listen to him.
The
Amnion are experimenting with specialised gap drives to achieve near-C
velocities for their warships. Nick Succorso and his people have direct
knowledge of this.

We
will try to survive until new programming is received.

Message
ends. Isaac.

“Director,”
Dolph interrupted with a touch of asperity, “what do you want us to do?
Free
Lunch
won’t wait around indefinitely. We’ve got an unidentified vessel
burning toward us from forbidden space. And for some reason” — he smiled like a
‘grimace — “
Trumpet
left us a homing signal to follow. Let’s make up our
minds, shall we? One way or another, we need to do some burning of our own.”

Min
hardly heard him. Morn Hyland. Alive because Warden had saved her. Morn with a
zone implant and a force-grown son.

And
Amnion in pursuit. Presumably the ship from forbidden space was Amnion: the
stakes were high enough for that.

And she
was stuck on a fleeing gap scout with the two men who’d hurt her most; the two
men she had most cause to fear.

I
want someone to make sure she stays alive —

It was
time: time for Min to prove herself; time to show that Warden had chosen well
when he selected her.

She
held up one stiff hand to silence Dolph. With all her authority in her eyes,
she faced the communications officer.

“How
many courier drones have you got left?”

Cray
didn’t need to check: she knew her job. “Three, sir.”

“Use
one,” Min ordered. “This can’t wait for regular service — not out here. That
could take hours. Send a message to UMCPHQ. Code it for Director Dios. Give him
a copy of
Trumpet’s
transmission. Dump in everything that’s happened
since we reached this sector, he can sort it out. And include all the data you
get from that homing signal — velocity, heading, gap parameters, whatever comes
in before you launch the drone.

“Tell
him” — at last she looked across the bridge at Dolph, met his questioning gaze
with a glare like a promise — “we’re going after Isaac.

“Do it
now.”

Instinctively
Cray glanced at Captain Ubikwe for confirmation.

The
muscles under his fat were strained tight; his eyes bulged with anger or doubt.
Nevertheless he replied with a short nod, and she went to work.

He held
Min’s eyes as if he wanted to shout at her. “Let me be clear about this,
Director,” he said in a voice full of raw harmonics. “We’re going after this ‘Isaac,’
whoever he is. You want me to turn my back on a possible Amnion incursion into
human space, even though it might constitute an act of war. And you want me to
turn my back on
Free Lunch
and her dubious contract with UMC First
Executive Assistant Cleatus Fane, even though that might constitute an act of
treason. Instead you want me to concentrate on what’s really important, which
is a Needle-class gap scout crewed by people so crazy or stupid they can’t
maintain a safe distance from an asteroid belt.

“Does
that about sum it up?”

“No,”
Min snorted. She understood his need to express his frustration — both for his
own sake and for the sake of his crew. But she was near the end of her
tolerance. “She came in so close because flaring that post was more important
than staying alive.”

“Sure.
That’s clear.” Cocking his head at scan, Dolph asked, “Porson, can you tell
where
Trumpet
came from?”

“Just
the general direction, sir.” Under the pressure of his duties, Porson didn’t
have time to feel defensive. “Somewhere in forbidden space. But if you’re
asking if she came from Thanatos Minor, the answer is, no. Her heading was all
wrong.”

“Oh,
well” — Dolph made a show of throwing up his hands — “that’s all right, then.
As long as
nothing
makes sense, I’m satisfied.

“You
heard the director,” he told his helm officer. “Bring us around on a pursuit
heading. Triangulate from her homing data. As soon as we’re secure for hard g,
give us as much acceleration as we can stand without falling out of our seats.

“Director
Donner,” he finished dourly, “you’d better find a place to strap yourself down.
This is going to be rough. We need a hell of a lot of thrust to match
Trumpet’s
velocity.”

Min
nodded sharply. Her heart was full of yelling, but none of it was aimed at
Captain Ubikwe or
Punisher
. Morn was one of
her people.
She’d
been raped and tortured, she’d had a zone implant forced into her head, at least
two murdering illegals had done whatever they wanted to her for months, the
Amnion had her for a while — and the UMCP had
set her up
for it. The
organisation Min served had
sold
Morn when she most needed help.

Now
Warden wanted her back. Wasn’t he done with her
yet?
How much more did
he think she could endure?

“I’ll
be in my cabin,” Min answered Dolph. “I want regular reports. If I make the
mistake of falling asleep, wake me up. I want to know what’s going on.”

Captain
Ubikwe opened his mouth to retort, but something in her face stopped him.
Instead he murmured, “Yes, sir,” then turned his attention to the helm station
and the display screens.

The
helm officer had already opened a ship-wide intercom channel. “All personnel
secure for g,” he announced. “We’re going to burn. Watch officers report when
ready.”

He hit
the acceleration warnings, and klaxons like distant cries went off everywhere.

As Min
left the bridge, the entire ship seemed to echo with g-alarms and urgency.

ANCILLARY

DOCUMENTATION

GAP
COURIER DRONES

Gap courier drones were
marvellous devices, in their way. They conveyed information — news, records,
and messages, contracts, financial transactions, and corporate debates, data
reqs, id files, and cries for help — from one part of human space to another in
a matter of hours; seldom in more than a standard day. Considering that the
distances involved were measured in dozens or hundreds of light-years,
communication within hours was an amazing achievement.

In
essence, a gap courier drone was all power. Aside from its fuel cells, the
negligible bulk of its miniaturised transmitter and receiver, and the virtually
non-existent weight of its SOD-CMOS chips — which carried astrogational data as
well as messages and other information — it had no mass except that of its
drives. Therefore it could be given thrust-to-mass ratios and hysteresis
parameters which no manned vessel might hope to emulate. It could accelerate
faster, attain higher velocities, and perform longer gap crossings than a
manned vessel.

Indeed,
gap courier drones might have performed their function in minutes instead of
hours, if they hadn’t been required to execute manoeuvres in real space:
acceleration and deceleration; course shifts to avoid obstacles, or to correct
the inevitable inaccuracies of gap crossing.

Under
normal circumstances, a gap courier drone never arrived in physical contact
with the transmitters and receivers it serviced. The instant it resumed tard
within range of its programmed target, it fired off its cargo of data in
intense microwave bursts, then immediately began deceleration. By the time the
target was ready to transmit new informational cargo, the drone was positioned
to commence acceleration back in the direction from which it had come. Thus the
drone could shuttle between its targets with no time lost waiting. It was only
required to stop moving when it needed maintenance, or when its fuel cells had
to be recharged.

Gap
courier drones were a familiar feature of humankind’s interstellar life. Only
their cost prevented them from being truly common. For most ordinary purposes,
however, individuals, corporations, and governments found it less expensive to
commit their informational cargo to manned vessels which happened to be going
in the desired direction anyway. This method of communication compensated for
its relative inefficiency by being far cheaper. And the inefficiency was only
relative: normal commercial traffic was regularly able to deliver informational
cargo to its intended recipient in a few days, a week at most. Naturally most
individuals, corporations, and governments chose to accept the delays of
commercial traffic rather than to invest in gap courier drones.

For
that reason, the United Mining Companies Police was much the largest single
user of drones, although the UMC and the GCES as well as humankind’s distant
stations kept them available for emergencies; and the UMCP used them primarily
to service the listening posts which watched the frontiers of Amnion space.

Still
gap courier drones
were
familiar, as common to public knowledge — if not
to public use — as the gap drive itself. They were assumed to be steadily at
work everywhere, helping the GCES to govern, and the UMCP to defend, the
species’ interstellar territory.

As much
as any other single human exercise in self-delusion, they contributed to the
irrational perception that vast space was small enough for men and women to
manage.

WARDEN

W
arden Dios was as scared as he’d ever been in his life.

He’d
planned for this occasion, prepared for it. In some sense it was almost
predictable. Surely by now he ought to be ready. If he weren’t, he never would
be.

Nevertheless
he was scared to the bone; so frightened he wanted to beat his fists together
and yell.

Unfortunately
he couldn’t.

He’d
just received
Punisher’s
— Min Donner’s — report. It scrolled
remorselessly down the phosphors of a readout on his desk in one of his secure
offices. But he couldn’t study it now because Koina Hannish, his new director
of Protocol, sat across the desk from him, talking intently about matters which
had consumed her attention since he’d appointed her. He had to finish with her,
get rid of her, before he could absorb Min’s report.

He was
scared because Min hadn’t used his exclusive priority codes. She’d allowed
Punisher
to code and route her message through normal UMCPHQ channels.

He had
no reason to think anyone outside UMCPHQ Communications could read her
transmission. Still “normal channels” meant that its arrival was common
knowledge in both Communications and Centre. In other words, the fact of the
report’s existence had already been included in the routine data-sharing which
occurred constantly between UMCPHQ and Holt Fasner’s Home Office.

The
Dragon would hear about Min’s report soon — if he hadn’t already.

That
was predictable: entirely in character for Min Donner, as well as for the
relationship between UMCPHQ and Fasner. And Warden had schemed hard to bring it
about.

Yet now
that it’d happened, it appalled him.

He didn’t
know what was in Min’s message; what it entailed; what it cost. The
consequences of his acts were about to bear fruit he couldn’t control and might
not be able to imagine.

Here
the contest between him and his master began in earnest. From now on he would
have no leeway to make ambiguous decisions, no opportunity for misdirection. If
he couldn’t carry his old fight into the open and win, everything he’d striven
for himself, as well as everything he’d asked of his people, would be wasted.