The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (82 page)

It
might happen. If he let it.

 _

 _

Half an hour passed. More?
Less? He didn’t know. Gradually he concluded that the Lab’s death storm was
lessening. Light still streaked like cries through the chaos of rock, but by
degrees it lost its garish intensity. The Lab was gone, burned down to its
atoms and discharged into the void. The illumination would die when it
exhausted its final fuel.

Nick
had begun murmuring over and over again, “Anytime now,” repeating himself as if
he were unaware that Sib could hear him. “Anytime now. Count the minutes,
bitch. You don’t have many left.”

Sib
didn’t listen. In this place — small as an atom himself within the jostling confusion
of the swarm — he could believe that the moral order of his life might be
overturned.

He
caught his first glimpse of the ship because she seemed to emerge straight from
the heart of the Lab’s diminished deflagration; created by violence and ravage.
Backlit with fire, she loomed out of the dark like a black behemoth, dwarfing
Sib and Nick and the asteroid to which they clung; dwarfing every chunk of rock
in the vicinity.

“There!”
Nick announced in a husky whisper, as if his voice was stuck in his throat,
trapped by passions he couldn’t swallow.

Her
lights were on, searching the vacuum around her: no sane captain navigated an
asteroid swarm without using video to complement scan, in case some freak
emission echo or sensor glitch masked an obstacle. In a few moments Sib saw her
outlines clearly. Roughly ovoid, studded with antennae, receptors, dishes, and
gun ports, and sliding forward without a sound, as if she floated on oil, she
soon seemed to fill the visual window of his faceplate, even though she was
still two or three k away.

Her
lights showed the scars of old battles, the marks of fresh damage. One dent
licked along her prow; another left an impression like a crater amidships. And
farther back her hull had been holed: torn metal opened on darkness inside her.
A cargo bay, Sib guessed.

That
was the way in. If the interior bulkheads could be cut, one or two laser rifles
might actually do the ship some harm. Not enough to stop her; but maybe enough
to slow her down — weaken her.

He’d
stopped sweating. His suit indicators warned that he was in danger of
dehydration.

Keep
out of my fucking way
.

He
still didn’t have an answer. He’d spent years obeying — and fearing — Nick.

Nick
crouched against his pitons. His helmet cocked back and forth as he studied
Soar
,
measured her progress, then checked his rifle to confirm that it was fully
charged.

“Cut
me, will you?” he muttered. “Come on, bitch. Just a little closer. Come find
out what that costs.”

He didn’t
speak to Sib again. As far as Sib could tell, Nick had forgotten that he
existed.

“It’s
time to pay.”

The
ship was less than a kilometre away when Nick released his pitons, launched
himself with a kick toward her looming bulk. He didn’t use his jets; didn’t
need them. Instead he coasted like a stone for the huge ship.

Sib
watched with his heart full of old cries. Despite the warmth of his suit, he
could feel black cold soaking into him.

Stay
right where you fucking are
. Let
Soar
go on
past. Stay alive alone in the dark. Hope that the resources of his suit held
out until
Trumpet
could come back for him; that
Trumpet
survived
long enough, or cared enough, to come back for him.

Or go.
Defy Nick one last time; stop begging to be spared. Try to strike some kind of
blow for all the people he loved.

You
do it anyway
. Maybe that was true. Maybe Morn had
made it true by saying it aloud.

If he
let Nick spare him, he would have to pay for it.

Nick
sailed away. Every few seconds
Soar’s
lights touched him, gleaming along
his suit like a hint of stars. He’d aimed himself well ahead of the ship: his
trajectory looked like it would intersect hers in another moment or two.

Sib
didn’t wait for mercy. He said
no
himself.

Jamming
his feet under him, he thrust off from the asteroid.

He didn’t
breathe. He wasn’t sure there was still air in his suit. He couldn’t tell
whether he’d jumped straight or hard enough to reach the ship. He concentrated
on Nick as if he thought that Nick could somehow draw him where he needed to
go.

Adrift
like a mote in the rush of the swarm, he sailed toward the huge ship.

Now he
saw that Nick wasn’t heading for the breached cargo bay in
Soar’s
flank.
Instead he aimed at her prow. As fatal as spikes, her forward guns jutted from
their ports — sleek laser tubes, massive matter cannon shafts, complex proton
emitters.

Somehow
Sib had contrived to jump in the right direction. Several heartbeats ahead of
him, Nick reached the hull, caught a handgrip. Sib would touch the ship himself
no more than five meters away from Nick.

But
there weren’t any handgrips on the surface ahead of him.

Hit;
bounce off; drift away — Back out into the swarm. The ship would glide past
him, leaving him in the void.

No
. His boots could generate a magnetic field. Any decent suit had
that capability: it was essential to EVA survival.

He
slapped the switch and flipped into a somersault.

When
his boots touched metal, they held.

At some
point he started breathing again. For what seemed like ages, relief and anoxia
left him blind; he couldn’t focus his eyes.

But it
was time. Here and now. No more hesitation. No more paralysis. Time to strike
his blow.

He
blinked his vision clear.

His
laser rifle was too small. It would take long minutes to burn into
Soar’s
outer hull; or damage even one of her guns. But there were other targets —

By the
illumination of his headlamps and
Soar’s
running lights, he scanned the
surface of the ship for particle sifters, cameras, receptor dishes; anything
vulnerable.

There:
a video camera; one of several searching the dark.

He
pointed his rifle, clasped the firing stud. First he missed.

Then a
red slash slagged the camera from its mounts.

A blow.
Sib bared his teeth. It wasn’t much, but it was
some
thing. Something he’d
never done before. If he’d had the chance, he might have yelled aloud until his
mute, screaming fear became a howl of defiance.

Nick
cut him off.

“I
warned you.”

He
wheeled; saw Nick in front of him.

“Sorus
is mine.” The voice of murder.

Frozen
with surprise, he watched as Nick raised his arms and brought his rifle to
bear.

In a
flash of coherent light, Sib Mackern was spared.

SORUS

S
orus Chatelaine rode the shockwave out from the Lab’s destruction
with Deaner Beckmann’s blood on her hands and more killing on her mind.

The
blast of her proton gun and the detonation of the Lab’s generator echoed inside
her as if she’d lit an inner chain reaction as hot and consuming as the one she’d
left behind. There was no turning back from that slaughter: it could only carry
her forward. Her actions were like atoms splitting themselves from violence to
more violence.

As the
wave front defeated itself against the charged rock of the swarm,
Soar
slowed
her headlong ride and began hunting
Trumpet’s
emission trail. For that
job Sorus trusted her scan first. In any case, there was nothing she could do
personally to help the search. Despite her appearance of attention to the ship
and the bridge — and to the mutated man beside her — she concentrated on other
things.

From
violence to violence —

The man
she really wanted to kill wasn’t Nick Succorso. He was Milos Taverner. As far
as she was concerned, Succorso was trivial. When she’d manipulated and
discarded him all those years ago, she truly hadn’t cared whether he lived or
died: she didn’t care now. On the other hand, no other action would have given
her as much harsh joy as murdering the Amnioni. And not only because he was
here, watching her, prepared to criticise: not only because whether or not she
survived the dissatisfaction of her masters depended on his evaluation of her.

She
also wanted to kill him because he’d forced her to destroy the Lab. Even in her
nightmares — the only dreams she had — she hadn’t foreseen that kind of
slaughter. He’d driven her to kill people she’d known and sometimes respected;
illegals like herself.

So much
killing. Each new link in the chain reaction twisted her heart. Her life
nauseated her. Only the violence itself kept her going —

She
didn’t have anything else to hope for.

She was
supposed to capture
Trumpet
somehow: she understood that clearly enough.
The Amnion would be dissatisfied by any other result. Unfortunately she didn’t
believe it would be possible. Despite her gamble with Ciro Vasaczk, she couldn’t
imagine anything except death.

If the
Amnion were merely dissatisfied, however, they might not withdraw her humanity.
She had too many other uses.

Then
other outcomes became conceivable.

If she
could put off her doom for a while —

“Got
it, Captain,” the scan first announced suddenly. “
Trumpet’s
emission
signature. No mistake.”

“Good,”
Sorus said crisply, although she hardly noticed what she was doing. “Compare it
with the course Retledge gave us — put any discrepancies up on the screen so we
can look at them. And route it to helm.

“Helm,
it’s time to get serious about catching her.” Orders were unnecessary now. Her
people already knew what to do. She spoke primarily to show Taverner that she
was carrying out his instructions diligently. “Scan should be able to give you
a velocity estimate. We need to go faster. We’ve already closed a lot of the
distance. Now we’ll cover the rest.

“If
Ciro Vasaczk did what I told him,” she added grimly, “we should get hints from
her particle trace before long.”

Unless
something went wrong —

She
faced Taverner grimly, defying him to challenge her.

Maybe
this time, she prayed privately, something will go wrong for you, you inhuman
bastard.

An hour
or two ago he’d brought a strange box as big as her command board to the
bridge. It was covered with controls and readouts which meant nothing to her.
Despite its size, he wore it in a harness around his neck so that he could
enter commands and see the results easily. Its weight meant nothing in zero g.

He’d
told her what it was, although she hadn’t asked: his SCRT; the device — he
claimed — which gave him instantaneous contact with
Calm Horizons
. The
time was near when the two vessels would need to work together without delays
in communication — and preferably without being overheard.

Maybe
he was telling her the truth. Maybe his box worked.

Maybe
Calm
Horizons
was near enough to join the hunt.

In that
case, Sorus might be able to carry the logic of violence a step farther.

Where
was the UMCP warship she’d last seen stationed near the Com-Mine belt,
obviously waiting for
Trumpet
! Even though she’d found no hint of the
cruiser, she felt sure it was somewhere close.

If
Taverner was telling the truth,
Calm Horizons
had already been seduced
into committing an act of war. With any luck at all, the big defensive would
eventually find herself in a pitched battle with the UMCP warship.

That
gave Sorus hope; the only hope she had left. She pictured the defensive and the
warship pounding each other to derelicts. She pictured herself shooting Milos
Taverner right between the eyes — before he could trigger the mutagen sacs he’d
set on the scrubber pads. If necessary, she pictured firing on
Calm Horizons
herself to make sure the defensive died. Then she pictured her people salvaging
what she needed most from
Calm Horizons’
drifting carcass: the antidote
which kept her human. A supply so large that it would last her as long as she
lived.

If all
those things happened, she would be free. She and her people —

The
chain reaction carried her forward. It was irresistible anyway: she didn’t try
to alter or deflect it. Her proton gun had brought down ruin on the Lab like an
instant of sunfire. Now she preferred to take her chances; risk her own
destruction.

But
first she had to stop
Trumpet
.