The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (26 page)

Personnel
aboard include —

Warden
paused to tighten the grip of his arms. He’d planned for this crisis, prayed
for it; readied himself — Now he had to see it through.

He’d
promised Holt that Morn Hyland would die. But Warden himself wanted her alive.

Deliberately
he added, “Joshua has quite a few people with him.”

“‘People’?”
Holt interrupted. “What ‘people’?” Hints of IR fire licked through his aura. “This
wasn’t supposed to be a goddamn passenger run.”

Now,
Warden thought, gripping himself harder. This is it.

As if
he weren’t staring ruin in the face, he answered calmly, “Nick Succorso. Four
of his crew — Mikka and Ciro Vasaczk, Sib Mackern, Vector Shaheed.”

He
almost hoped Holt would recognise Shaheed’s name. The fallout would be awkward;
but at least Holt would be distracted.

Unfortunately
the Dragon was concentrating too hard to call on his encyclopaedic knowledge of
his enemies.

“Joshua,
of course,” Warden continued as if he’d only paused to swallow. “Morn Hyland.
And a kid named Davies Hyland.”

The
bait.

Fasner
may not have heard that last piece of information. He was already on his feet,
already yelling.

“Morn
Hyland?
”
His fists punched the air at Warden’s face; an apoplectic flush mottled his
cheeks. “You God damn sonofabitch! You sent Joshua out there to rescue
Morn
Hyland?
”

“No, I
didn’t,” Warden said stolidly; falsely.

“Are
you saying he broke his programming?” Holt roared. “He’s a
cyborg!
You
told me it’s impossible for him to do anything he wasn’t programmed for! And
you
specifically
told me he wasn’t programmed to rescue her!”

“He
wasn’t.” Holt’s fury made it easier for Warden to retain his poise.
Nevertheless he didn’t bother to conceal his own anger. He hated lying, even to
the man he considered humankind’s worst betrayer. “But he also wasn’t
programmed to kill her. If that was what you wanted, you should have said so. I
assume Joshua needed Nick for something, and taking Morn along was Nick’s
price.”

Nearly
screaming, Holt fired back, “Then why aren’t they dead now? Have you gone
stupid, or is this treason? Morn Hyland is alive!
What’s the matter with
you?
I
ordered
you to kill that ship, kill everybody aboard, if
anything went wrong! Don’t you call
this
wrong? Why didn’t your fucking
Min Donner carry out my orders?”

“‘Treason,’”
Warden snorted with a glower. “I like that. You haven’t even heard my report
yet, and you accuse me of treason. Do you really want to miss the point
now?
Wouldn’t you rather wait until I’m finished?”

Unaccustomed
to men who disobeyed him — or, worse, men who acted like they knew better than
he did — Holt gaped back at the UMCP director. Above his open mouth, his eyes
blinked like cries.

“Then
sit down and stop shouting,” Warden commanded as if he’d gained what he wanted.
Trying to undermine Holt’s indignation, he added, “You’re giving yourself an
infarction.” Holt knew what Warden’s prosthetic sight was good for. “None of
this is simple. I need you to pay attention.”

The
Dragon closed his mouth. He sat down. For a moment his emissions turned pale
with uncertainty. Unaware of what he did, he raised a trembling hand to his
chest as if he wanted to rub his heart. He was a discerning judge of his own
symptoms, however, his own condition. Almost immediately he came back into
focus like a beast emerging from a lair, ready for battle.

To prevent
him from speaking, Warden said acidly, “Director Donner didn’t just send us
that report. She read it. She has enough sense to see what it means. She didn’t
kill
Trumpet
because she knew I would flay her skin off if she did. We
need that ship alive, Holt — we need everybody aboard
alive.
”

Smell
the
bait,
you heartless bastard! Give me a chance.

Holt
hawked an obscenity. “Ward, you’re hanging by your balls here. You had better
do an
extraordinary
job of convincing me. Otherwise you’re gone. Your
commission won’t last long enough to get you back on your own shuttle. And I
promise you this. The next UMCP director will know how to make that bitch of
yours follow orders.”

“Fine.”
Warden kept his arms locked to his chest, but he wielded his voice like a lash.
“I’m trying to save your entire kingdom for you, not to mention your personal
ass. If you can’t think of anything more useful to do than threaten me, I’ll
quit now and let the ‘next UMCP director’ make sense out of all this.”

Without
a blink or a flicker, Holt held Warden’s glare. His aura yowled of furies that
didn’t show on his face. This was the Holt Fasner who scared Warden down to his
bones: the man who used rage and hate and hunger as forms of concentration, to
make himself invulnerable.

Warden
also knew how to concentrate. But his emotions were of another kind. Slumping
slightly, as if he were able to relax with the Dragon’s glower fixed on him, he
resumed his report.

“Don’t
ask me to explain all the details. I only know what was in
Trumpet’s
flare. But here’s the way it looks, as far as I can put it together.

“Nick
Succorso and Morn Hyland went to Enablement Station because she was pregnant. I
don’t know why either of them cared, or why they thought going there was a good
idea. All I know is, they went there, and she had them ‘force-grow’ her a son,
whom she named ‘Davies Hyland’ — after her father, I suppose. Then they got in
trouble.

“Apparently
the Amnion decided they want Davies. They think he holds the secret to mutating
Amnion so that they’ll be indistinguishable from human beings.” Are you
listening, Holt? Do you hear what I’m really saying? “Which means they could
infiltrate our space without being detected. They could destroy us without a
shot being fired, and we wouldn’t even know it was happening until we were
already doomed.”

Can you
smell it?

Holt’s
aura roiled with agitation and a clenched, acidic lust, but his features
revealed nothing. Only his eyes blinked and blinked.

“So
Captain’s
Fancy
ran,” Warden rasped, “and the Amnion sent warships after her. She
must have lost her gap drive — instead of trying to reach human space, she
headed for Billingate, the nearest port with a shipyard.

“That’s
crucial. She’s a tach ship. What happened to her gap drive? And how did she get
there and back so fast at space-normal speeds? A trip like that should have
taken years.

“Joshua’s
message said, ‘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.’ Here’s what I think happened.

“Nick
blew out his gap drive getting to Enablement, and he couldn’t fix it, so he
traded for repairs. I don’t know what he had to trade
with,
but he must
have had something, or else he wouldn’t have been able to pay to get Morn’s son
force-grown. Maybe the Amnion thought it was valuable enough to cover repairs.
Or maybe it was an experiment — they used
Captain’s Fancy
to test their ‘specialised
gap drives.’ I can’t imagine how else Nick and his crew would know about it.”

“You’re
wasting my time,” Holt snarled impatiently. His ability to contain his furies
seemed to be weakening. “I don’t care about weapons systems. That’s your worry.
If you can’t figure out what to do about this, I’ll find someone who can.”

Warden
nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll do my job. But that’s only a piece of the story.

“Whatever
happened after
Captain’s Fancy
left Enablement, the warships cut her off
before she reached Billingate. They
wanted
Davies.” That was as close as
Warden dared go to waving his bait under Holt’s nose. “Trying to protect
himself, I guess, Nick put Davies in an ejection pod and fired him to
Billingate.” Warden had arrived at this conclusion by an intuitive leap based
on the combination of
Punisher’s
and
Free Lunch’s
transmissions. “Now
Captain’s Fancy
was allowed to dock. I’m assuming the Amnion didn’t want
to alienate Billingate, so they didn’t take Davies by force. Instead they
ordered Nick to get him back and hand him over or face the consequences of
cheating them.

“Apparently
Nick gave them Morn. He must have been trying to buy time.” However Hashi had
come by it, his information was invaluable. “But she wasn’t the one they
wanted. As far as he was concerned, it was Davies or nothing. But before he let
him have her — this is crucial, too — he gave her some of DA’s mutagen immunity
drug. Joshua says it’s possible they know about the drug because they may have
found it in her blood.”

Trying
to make Morn’s survival more palatable, Warden offered Holt vindication as well
as bait. The Dragon’s every instinct had rebelled against Vector Shaheed’s
antimutagen research for Intertech. Warden had persuaded the UMC CEO to give
the research to DA against his better judgement. Perhaps being proved right
would soften Holt’s outrage.

He kept
his reaction to himself, however. His emissions boiled and spat; but they
articulated his emotions in colours and patterns, not in words.

Fear
tugged at Warden’s guts. He could feel failure gathering in the room around
him.

“That’s
when
Trumpet
arrived,” he went on stiffly. “What happened next isn’t
clear yet. Joshua and Milos got together with Nick. Then Milos went over to the
Amnion. He may have been trying to warn them.” He refrained from mentioning
that this detail was crucial as well. “And someone stole Davies from
Billingate. Someone — Nick and a few of his people — raided the Amnion to get
Morn back.

“Somehow
they all ended up aboard
Trumpet
— Nick, four of his crew, Davies, Morn,
and Joshua.
Captain’s Fancy
went down attacking one of the warships so
that
Trumpet
could get out of dock. But Joshua did his job. When
Billingate’s fusion generator blew, he escaped by riding the confusion.”

Warden
lifted his shoulders as if he were consigning his fate to the Dragon’s whim. “That’s
the report. Director Donner added the information that there’s a ship,
presumably Amnion, heading out of forbidden space after
Trumpet
. And she
told me about
Free Lunch’s
alleged contract with you. Then she went
after
Trumpet
herself” — he did his best to spare Min the consequences
of Holt’s anger — “to keep the Amnion off Joshua’s back until we decide what we
want to do with him.”

“Fine.”
Holt’s emissions suggested mockery. “You make it all sound wonderfully tidy and
successful. In fact, you almost make it sound reasonable.

“What
do you propose to do now?
Trumpet
is back in human space. Presumably you
can protect her. If I give you enough rope so you can go ahead and hang
yourself, what decisions will you make?”

Warden
was ready for this. He was prepared to tell one more lie — a lie which was
close enough to the truth to be plausible.

Leaning
forward in his seat as if he’d come to the heart of his intentions, he said
with quiet intensity, “I know you don’t want Morn back, Holt, but I think we’re
damn lucky we got her. We’re damn lucky we got all those other people. We need
them.”

Holt’s
emanations looked as hot as a solar eruption, although he didn’t interrupt.

Softly
Warden insisted, “We need what Nick and his people know about those near-C
experiments. We need Joshua because he’s too valuable to throw away. We need
Morn because of what she can tell us about the Amnion — and because she gives
us a way to check whatever Nick says, which probably won’t be the truth unless
he knows we’ll catch a lie. And we need Davies so we can learn what the Amnion
hope to get out of him.

“This
is our chance. We can put Director Donner aboard
Trumpet
. Once she gets
close enough to transmit a message, she can invoke Joshua’s new codes. Then he’ll
take her orders. With her in command and
Punisher
as escort, she can
take them all to someplace safe — a place where the Amnion won’t find them and
nobody else will get in our way. We can learn everything they know at our own
pace, and we won’t have to let events rush us.

“And
there’s another benefit,” he hurried to add before Holt ran out of patience. “Special
Counsel Maxim Igensard wants blood. If we don’t contain him” — deliberately
Warden spoke of
we
as if there were no distinction between himself and
his master — “he won’t stop until he finds something that makes us look dirty.
So dirty he can dictate his own terms to the GCES.

“But if
we produce survivors from Billingate, these specific survivors, most of his
case against us will collapse. We’ll be able to prove that what we’ve gained
justifies the risks we took. We’ll even be able to give him an explanation he
can’t refute for what we did with Intertech’s mutagen immunity research. And
not abandoning Morn Hyland will do wonders for our credibility.”