The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (77 page)

“Have
you got id on those ships?” Darrin asked.

“I’m
co-ordinating now, Captain,” the communications first answered. Transmissions
between the ships and Lab Centre were separate data-streams, distinct from the
flow of scan. However, a quick time-slice comparison would enable him to
determine which data-stream belonged to which blip.

Within
five seconds, a name replaced the code over the red blip in the centre of the
screen.

Trumpet
.

Unmistakably
moving away from the Lab, out of the swarm. And only two thousand k beyond
Free
Lunch
.

“Target
acquired,” Alesha announced to no one in particular. At this distance through
this much confused rock, she couldn’t have hit
Trumpet
if she’d fired
all day. The gap scout was totally blocked from
Free Lunch’s
scan. Nevertheless
Alesha’s words lit a small incendiary excitement in Damn’s chest.

Tension
or eagerness tightened his bridge crew in their g-seats, sharpened their
movements. Automatically, without orders, the helm first projected
Trumpet’s
course, plotted an interception, and posted both in the schematic.

Free
Lunch
would be able to cut off the gap scout and
attack in three hours.

Darrin
was about to say, Let’s go, when communications named the second red blip. The
information surprised him to silence.

Soar
.

“Damn,”
Alesha breathed as if she were speaking for the whole ship. “She was at
Billingate. What’s she doing here?”

Darrin
knew. He didn’t need intuition; the logic of the coincidence was too obvious. “
Soar
,”
he pronounced quietly. “Captain Sorus Chatelaine. According to her reputation,
she worked for the Bill. And sometimes the Amnion.

“That’s
who followed
Trumpet
out of forbidden space.”

He was
sure.

“Problems,
people,” Alesha warned the bridge. Experience and her relationship with Darrin
gave her the right to say such things. “We’ve got complications. Be ready.”

He
cleared his throat.

“If she
knows where
Trumpet
is,” he said, organising his thoughts, “we have
competition.” He ran some rough estimates on his board, looked at the results. “She
could turn right now and get to
Trumpet
before we do.” The gap scout’s
pace through the maze was efficient and steady, but unhurried. Anybody willing
to take enough risks could chase
Trumpet
down. “Even if she waits until
she reaches the Lab’s control space so she can follow
Trumpet’s
particle
trace, she’ll still be close.

“If she
doesn’t know, of course, she’s out of it. She’s heading the wrong way. By the
time Beckmann tells her what she needs, she’ll be too late to catch up with us.”

“What
do you think, Captain?” communications asked casually. Not Alesha: Darrin
assumed that his targ first had already made up her own mind.

He
paused for three beats of his heart, simply looking at the schematic and
letting the logic of the coincidence complete itself. Then he shrugged and took
his chances.

“She
knows. If she’s good enough to track
Trumpet
here, she’s good enough to
finish the job.”

It was
possible for him to take such things simply and act on them, as if they were
facts instead of speculations.

A
moment later he added, “But the Amnion don’t want
Trumpet
destroyed.
They want her captured — they want her cargo back. Which means” — he looked
around the bridge, faced each of his people in turn to confirm that they were
prepared — “we’d better make sure we get to her first.”

No one
hesitated. “I’m on it, Captain,” helm murmured as data and scan fed information
to his board. At the same time Alesha began tapping power to charge the ship’s
matter cannon.

Darrin
glanced at his indicators, saw that the airlock was secure. Pane and her people
were out of danger.

He gave
the order, and
Free Lunch’s
thrust kicked to life.

He didn’t
recognise what he was feeling until he looked at Alesha. From this small
distance, he could see delicate beads of sweat gathering at her temples. In all
the years he’d loved her, he’d only seen her perspire when she was scared.

Then he
knew that he, too, was afraid.

DAVIES

“W
e’re not closing.”

Davies
was on fire. Hunger, rage, and a strange species of madness were burning him
up.

“We’re
going to lose her, Angus.”

Angus
didn’t bother to answer.

In one
sense, Davies had been living this way too long. But in another, he was
dependent on it. He needed the pressures of his circumstances and his
metabolism to deflect him, defend him, from the central confusion at the core
of his being. He’d been born with the knowledge that he was a woman, despite
what his eyes and his nerves and other people told him. He was a woman, he was
Morn,
in ways which had nothing to do with the shape of his flesh or the nature of
his hormones. His bond with his mother was fundamentally false.

But if
he allowed himself to dwell on the discrepancy, he would crack. The stress
would burst his brain like a rotten fruit.

Unfortunately
his defences left him vulnerable to other forms of craziness.

When he’d
learned that
Soar
had once been known as
Gutbuster
, the oddly
fragile balance between his enhanced resources and his acute confusion had
failed. He’d begun to burn inside like magnesium under water, devouring bound
oxygen until he could reach atmosphere and take true fire.

Gutbuster
had hit
Intransigent
with a super-light proton beam. His
mother’s no Morn’s no
his
goddamn it
Bryony Hyland’s
station in
targeting control had lost structural integrity. She’d died because she’d
stayed at her board to save
Intransigent
.

Davies
remembered that. He’d become a cop because of it.

As a
young girl, Morn Hyland had sworn in the silence of her heart that someday she
would
get
that ship; avenge her mother. And she’d known how to hold a
grudge. Somewhere in the depths of her aggrieved soul, beneath all the harm
which Angus and Nick and the UMCP had done to her, she’d kept that purpose
fresh until it was imprinted on Davies.

Now he’d
lost his ability to care about anything except retribution. It seemed to eat at
his sanity like vitriol. Morn was able to think about other things, take them
into account: he couldn’t. Instead he fulminated inwardly because Angus refused
to go faster.

Trumpet
was moving too slowly, following
Soar’s
particle trail and
Lab Centre’s departure protocols too cautiously; Angus was worrying too much.
Davies wanted to make the ship burn like his heart, but Angus paid no
attention. Instead he concentrated on data Davies couldn’t interpret, on
questions Davies didn’t consider worth asking.

Despite
the blood on his back and the shipsuit still tucked down around his waist,
Angus had never seemed more like a machine than he did right now: blind,
literal, and impervious.

Davies
hardly noticed when Vector left the bridge. He ignored Sib’s moist anxiety as
the former data first drifted around the command stations, explicitly keeping
watch on Nick even though Nick could barely move. While Angus worked and Sib
sweated — while Nick alternately gasped and chuckled to himself like a man
fighting an internal battle which sometimes struck him as funny — Davies ran
insistent course projections, feverishly comparing Angus’ decisions with Lab
Centre’s operational input and the swarm charts Deaner Beckmann had supplied;
calculating and recalculating the lag between
Trumpet
and
Soar
.

“We’re
going to lose her,” he rasped for the ten or even the twentieth time.

Angus
keyed commands as if he were oblivious. “What’s Morn doing?” he asked without
raising his head. “What does she need Vector for?”

Davies’
casts and the itch of healing fretted him: another distraction. He ground his
teeth. “We’re going to
lose
her. You’re letting her get away.”

Artificially
calm, Angus looked up from his readouts.

“You’re
wasting my time,” he told Davies flatly. “If you can’t shut up, say something
useful. Explain to me why Lab Centre gave us exactly the same course as
Soar
.”

Apparently
that was true. Despite the hot static of the swarm,
Soar’s
readings
matched
Trumpet’s
assigned departure too closely for the similarity to
be coincidental. Every step and turn that Angus had been instructed to take
between the rocks aligned itself neatly with
Soar’s
residual trail.

“Who
cares?” Davies retorted bitterly. “Maybe they’re too lazy to plot us a new way
out. What difference does it make?”

If we
already know
Soar’s
heading, we can go faster.

Sib
didn’t wait for Angus to answer. “It isn’t normal,” he put in uncomfortably. He
seemed unable to relax: old anxieties kept him tense, even though Nick was
effectively helpless. “Places like the Lab spread out traffic as much as they
can. They don’t want one ship covering another to disguise an attack. And they
don’t want trouble between ships. If there’s trouble, they lose business, no
matter who wins.

“But
that’s not all.” Sib kept his gun in his hand. “The kind of ships that come
here don’t want to be too close together. They don’t know who might turn out to
be hostile. And they don’t want anyone else to see where they’re headed.”

Nick
let out a clenched laugh, as if he were strangling.

Angus
aimed a scowl at Davies. “Sure looks like that fucker Beckmann wants us to go
after
Soar
, doesn’t it?” When Davies didn’t reply, he went on, “The
problem is, I can’t figure out why. What’s he got to gain? What could
Chatelaine’ve told him that would make him want to help us sneak up behind her?

“I’m
not going faster,” he finished, “until I know whose game we’re playing here.”

Davies
bit his lip so that he wouldn’t shout, What
difference
does it make? Who
cares?

God
damn it, Angus, we’re going to lose her!

“It’s a
setup,” Nick croaked unexpectedly. The mention of Sorus Chatelaine’s name
translated him out of his self-absorption. “Beckmann’s on her side. Maybe she’s
getting old, but I bet she can still fuck. Give her a few hours, and she’d have
him eating her shit. He’s setting us up.”

Davies
didn’t listen. He couldn’t. According to
Soar’s
emissions, her thrust
was heavier than
Trumpet’s
. And it was working harder.
Gutbuster
was pulling away. Angus could have caught her —
Trumpet
was swift and
nimble enough to catch almost anything in this swarm — but he was letting her
escape.

Seething,
Davies toggled his intercom, opened a ship-wide channel. He didn’t know where
Morn was, but he could reach her this way. She’d told Angus that they were
going after
Soar
. And Angus obeyed her — Davies didn’t understand or
care why. He meant to call her back to the bridge so that she would make Angus
carry out her orders.

Before
he could speak, however, he seemed to feel her behind him as if her presence
had a palpable aura which altered and defined the atmosphere around the command
stations.

He
turned, saw her drifting down the companionway, guiding herself with her hands
on the rails.

“Morn —”
he began.

The
focused outrage on her face stopped him. She looked as angry as he felt:
furious enough to kill.

Something
had changed since she’d left to check on Mikka and Ciro.

When
Angus glanced toward her, she told him, “It’s worse than I thought.” Her
control showed in the iron lines of her face, the precise delineation of her
movements. Nevertheless a tremor she couldn’t suppress serrated her voice so
that it cut.

Sib
Mackern caught a handgrip on the bulkhead beyond the command station and froze,
his face pale. Nick rolled his eyes and croaked out another chuckle.

“Meaning
what?” Angus asked brusquely.

Morn
floated to the back of Davies’ g-seat so that she could face Angus more easily.
“I don’t know if he knew what he was getting Ciro into.” She didn’t need to say
Nick’s name: the focus of her anger was obvious. “Whether he did or not doesn’t
matter now. But it’s worse than I thought.”

Sib
groaned softly. Angus opened his mouth, then shut it again and waited.

“Ciro —”
For an instant Morn’s restraint faltered. While she fought to regain it, she
swung toward Nick and whispered like a lick of flame, “You did this.” Then she
faced Angus again.