The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (52 page)

From
Min’s perspective, he didn’t seem old enough to have seen much of anything.

More
than twenty-
five
of them? she protested to herself. What was this, some
kind of epidemic? Resisting a surge of impatience, she asked, “Sick how?”

Foster
shrugged like a wince. “Nausea. Vomiting. High blood pressure. Disorientation.
Hallucinations.” He glanced at Dolph as if he were hoping for confirmation,
then added, “Five of them told me separately that the walls are leaning on
them. Trying to squash them.

“None
of them are in danger. They aren’t sick enough to die. But the way they feel,
they might prefer dying.”

Nearly
half the crew —

Min
growled through her teeth. “Sounds like they’ve been overdosing on stim and
hype.”

Tension
clenched Dolph’s shoulders; instinctive rejection. But he didn’t interject a
retort.

“Actually”
— Foster gave another uncomfortable shrug — “it sounds like SAD. Space
adjustment disorder,” he explained unnecessarily. “The symptoms are classic.”

Because
she feared that he might be right, she had to stifle an impulse to shout at
him. “SAD?”
Punisher
was damaged, shorthanded, and worn-out. “A goddamn
epidemic
of SAD?” The whole vessel had already suffered too much in this system. “On
an experienced ship like this?”

Now
Dolph spoke. “That,” he breathed heavily, “is the problem. You don’t believe
it. I don’t either.

“Director
Donner” — he pronounced her name and title with special precision as his weary
gaze rose to her face — “I think we have a sick-out on our hands.”

Abruptly
Foster slotted his stool away to one of the walls and began working at the main
sickbay control panel, ostensibly checking the condition of his immediate
patients. Apparently he agreed with his captain. Perhaps his sense of medical
ethics barred him from saying so.

Sick-out.
Stung by alarm and indignation, Min stilled herself; became as poised and
motionless as her handgun. Not an epidemic: a protest. Mute, passive resistance
to her orders. Disobedience which stopped short of mutiny. But the UMCP Code of
Conduct made no provision for such an action. It was called “malingering”: it
was a court-martial offence.

“Captain
Ubikwe,” she asked softly, “what kind of ship are you running?”

Dolph’s
mouth twisted bitterly. “As far as I can tell, it’s the kind I’ve been told to
run.” Anger ached in his stained eyes. A moment later, however, he said, “She’s
my ship, Min. My problem. I’ll deal with it. But there’s something I need from
you first.”

Min
waited like a weapon aimed at his head.
Punisher
had been turned aside
from a much-needed leave so that she could chase a UMCP gap scout all the way
to Massif-5 — and then put Nick Succorso in command. This was the result.

That
wasn’t Dolph’s responsibility. It was Min’s. And Warden Dios’.

“I said
a couple of things have happened,” Dolph went on, holding her glare. “The other
may be worse.” He paused to search her face, then announced, “
Trumpet
has switched off her homing signal.”

She
didn’t move; didn’t react. Nevertheless her hands burned as if magnesium flares
had been lit in her palms. If Nick Succorso had been there in front of her, she
might have started breaking his bones, one at a time.

“We
didn’t lose it,” Dolph asserted flatly. “Class-1 homing signals are just too
damn helpful to be lost. They tell you everything you need to re-acquire them.
And when they’re switched off, they tell you that, too.

“
Trumpet
,
“ he concluded, “is trying to get away from us.”

Min
looked back at him as if she were impervious to surprise or shock. Past a fire
which only felt like pain because she couldn’t act on it, she asked, “What is
it you need from me?”

“I need
an
explanation
,” he broke out in sudden passion. “I need to know
who’s
doing what to
whom
in this goddamn farrago.” But an instant later he
stopped himself. “No, forget it. That was uncalled for. If you knew, you would
have told me already.”

Controlling
his emotions with formality, he said, “Director Donner, I need to know what we’re
going to do now. How can we follow
Trumpet
if we don’t know where she’s
headed?”

In
silence, Min chewed flame and obscenities.

Warden
Dios, you misguided, secretive sonofabitch, what the hell do you
want
from
me?

Of
course she saw Dolph’s point. To confront his crew’s fear and resistance would
be costly for the whole ship. If his people refused him, hardened their
position, they might all end up facing courts-martial. But if they backed down
under pressure, they would lose respect for themselves — and cops more than
anyone else survived on the strength of their respect for themselves. Why
should Dolph try to persuade or intimidate his people back to work, if
Punisher
no longer had anything to do?

So what
were Min’s choices?

Give
up? Head home? Forget that she, too, needed self-respect? That questions which
affected all human space rode with Angus, Nick, and Morn aboard the gap scout?

Or
search for
Trumpet’s
particle trace? Quarter the complex sargasso of the
system until the cruiser’s entire crew came down sick in earnest from simple
strain and exhaustion?

Or call
in VI Security, req help? Help which might take days to get organised?

Or give
up in another way? Find a listening post, flare UMCPHQ, ask for instructions?

Or
guess. Stake everything on her own judgement or intuition.

Slowly,
choosing her words with care, she answered, “I said they might go looking for a
lab. Let’s assume I’m right. How many bootleg research facilities are there in
this system?”

Punisher
had left her tour of duty around Massif-5 only a few days ago.
Dolph Ubikwe had everything he’d ever known about the system at his fingertips.

“Six.
That we’re aware of.”

Six?
Shit. Min wrapped a hand around the butt of her gun to cool the fire in her
palm. Massif-5 was heaven for illegals. “How many of those could
Trumpet
reach on the general heading of her last signal?”

Dolph
gazed at her without blinking. “Two.”

“Just
two? That helps.” She chewed her options for a moment, then asked, “Which of
them is equipped to study drugs and mutagens? Which is likely to recognise
Vector Shaheed’s reputation and let him work there?”

Nothing
moved in Dolph’s face. He might have given up breathing as well as blinking. “Deaner
Beckmann’s.”

Then he
added, warning her, “But it’s murder to get to. A gap scout — any small ship —
can manoeuvre in there a hell of a lot better than we can.”

As if
she were saying, I don’t give a damn, Min announced, “That’s where we’re going.”
She glanced at Foster’s back, cocked an eyebrow toward the corridor full of
hammocks. “Unless you have a better idea.”

Snorting
softly, Dolph lowered his head. “Shit, Min,
all
my ideas are better than
that. But if I were in your place, I might make the same decision. At least I
hope I would.” Memories of Massif-5 and damage seemed to weigh on his
shoulders. Slowly at first, then faster and harder, he scrubbed his hands on
his thighs. He might have been trying to generate courage by sheer friction.

Then he
slapped his knees and looked up at her again. He’d reached a decision of his
own. “In the meantime,” he drawled, “it would help if you happened to consider
this an appropriate occasion to yell at me.”

He
surprised her. Angrily she snapped, “Say what?”

“Chew
me out,” he explained. “Give me a dressing-down.” Hard humour pulled at the
corners of his mouth. “Blame me for this sudden outbreak of SAD. Say whatever
you want, just so long as you mean most of it. And you’re loud about it.” When
she went on staring at him as if he’d lost his mind, he grimaced. “I want them
to hear you outside.

“You
can do that, can’t you?” Sarcasm gave his voice a taunting edge. “You’ve been
wanting to tear into me ever since you came aboard. As far as I can tell, the
only real secret of command is being able to pick your occasions to get mad. So
get mad at me now. Be in command.”

He met
her glare of consternation with a sardonic smile, as if he’d tricked her
somehow.

She
wanted to retort, Chew yourself out, you bastard. You’re a big boy now — you
can supply your own abuse. But the humour behind his provocative smile told her
that she’d missed the point. He thought he had something to gain if his
sick-out crew heard her — a phrase popular in the Academy — “stripping the paint
off his hull.”

Maybe
he knew what he was doing.

So she
took a deep breath, held it for a moment while she tapped the depths of her old
outrage. Then she spent the next three minutes doing her best to burn blisters
into Dolph Ubikwe’s fat cheeks.

When she
finished, Foster was staring at her with his mouth open. Mute laughter shook
Dolph’s shoulders.

“Now
you tell me,” she rasped, keeping her voice low. “Why is that funny?”

He
shook his head. “Wait. You’ll see.”

Lugubriously,
pretending that even in zero g his bulk was difficult to move, he undipped his
belt and drifted off his stool. Wearing a look of exaggerated pathos, he palmed
open the doors. As he floated out of sickbay, however, his expression resumed
its earlier fatigue and concern.

Min
followed him far enough to hold the palm-plate so that the doors stayed open.

Out
among the g-hammocks, he paused briefly as if he were surveying a battlefield.
Then, apparently at random, he selected one and bobbed toward it. Curling his
fingers in the mesh, he frowned sadly at its occupant. “How are you doing,
Baldridge?” He could have read the man’s id patch, but Min was sure that he
knew all his people by name. “You must feel like hell.”

“Aye,
sir,” Baldridge answered thinly.

“What’s
going on? What’s happening to you?”

The
hammock shifted as if Baldridge were squirming. “Don’t know, sir. I was working
my board like always, just sitting there, and my eyes went spotty. Couldn’t see
the readouts. Then I started puking. Spots were so damn big, I couldn’t help
trying to heave them up. My duty officer had to bring me here.”

“Sounds
miserable,” Dolph rumbled sympathetically. “They’re going to have to make the
sickbays on these tubs bigger. You shouldn’t have to hang out here in a damn
hammock.”

“Aye,
sir.” The uncertainty in Baldridge’s tone was plain.

Again
without any obvious reason for his selection, Dolph approached another invalid.
This time a woman answered him. He asked her the same questions in different
words: she gave him her version of the answers. He patted her head through the
mesh as if he wanted to comfort her, then moved to a third hammock.

Glancing
aside, Min saw that Foster had come to watch from the doorway with her. He
seemed full of his responsibility for his patients: perhaps he wanted to be
sure that Captain Ubikwe didn’t mistreat them.

When
Dolph had expressed his solicitude a third time, he stopped moving around.
Instead he told the man he’d just questioned, “You know, almost the same thing
happened to me once.”

He
spoke as if he were talking to the man personally; but now his deep voice was
pitched to carry, so that everyone in the corridor could hear him.

“It
wasn’t on my first ship, it was the second. I mean, I wasn’t still wet behind
the ears. At least I didn’t think so. But it happened to me anyway. Our medtech
— he was a crusty old s.o.b. who’d been through the gap a few times too many —
told me I didn’t just have SAD, I was fucking
depressed
.”

A grin
flashed across his face. Then he became serious again.

“Before
it happened, I thought I was doing pretty good. Only my second ship, and
already I’d worked myself up to targ third. On my way to the upper ranks, where
they get to make their own decisions practically every day. The fact is, I
thought I was hot shit. Unfortunately that turned out to be true.”

His
mouth hinted at another smile, but he didn’t stop.

“We hit
heavy action, four illegals, one really huge hauler and three gunboat escorts,
and they were trying to duck us in an asteroid belt. It wasn’t my first action,
or even my first heavy action, that first tour wasn’t what you could politely
call a cakewalk, but for some reason it scared me different than I’d ever been
scared before. The hauler wasn’t agile, but those gunboats could spin rings
around us, especially when we were moving slow enough to survive in a belt.
They were coming at me from every direction at once, I couldn’t keep all those
trajectories on my readouts at the same time, not to mention in my mind. And
for reasons which weren’t exactly clear to me, the old man — our captain wanted
us to call him that, God knows why — didn’t let me put targ on automatic and
just blaze away. No, he wanted to pick his own targets in his own sweet time.