The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (97 page)

There.

No
mistake.

Shit!

And no
time —

“Angus,”
he barked urgently, trying not to shout, not to panic, “we’ve got company. Off
to the side.” He named the blip’s relative position. Scan was still too
hampered to supply an image. “She’s coming in fast.

“It’s
Free
Lunch
.” His voice cracked. Scan was sure. “The emission match is too close
to be wrong.

“
God
,
Angus!
Now
what’re we going to do?”

Angus
didn’t answer. Only panting came over the intercom, guttural as a death rattle.

Davies
looked at Morn, but she didn’t answer either. Instead she stared at the
screens, her face blank and helpless.

She’d
routed a course projection overlay to the scan display: her course; the one she’d
plotted for
Trumpet’s
escape. It told him that when she hit her keys,
ignited cold thrust, the gap scout would burn almost directly into the path of
Soar’s
ally.

ANGUS

T
he airlock closed and sealed behind him, but he didn’t notice it. He
needed to reach the far side of
Trumpet’s
hull quickly — the exposed
side. Get there and get back behind the relative shelter of the gap scout’s
mass in the few seconds left. He slipped the muzzle of his matter cannon into
the nearest handgrip, left it there. Slamming his boots against the rock, he
sailed up and over the ship.

The
instant he rounded the occlusion of
Trumpet’s
bulk, a keen lance of pain
drove through his EM prosthesis into his brain. Too swift for his zone implants
to stop or manage it, it seemed to nail his optic nerves to the back of his
skull.

Oh
Christ shit God!
Involuntarily he slapped a hand
over his faceplate, but that didn’t help him. Even sheathed in mylar and
plexulose, his flesh was too permeable to ward off the pain.

He’d
forgotten to adjust the polarisation of his faceplate against the boson storm;
to filter out the savagery radiating on the bandwidths his prosthesis received.

Damn
it! Where were those flicking databases when he
needed
them? Why hadn’t his programming foreseen this?

He knew
the answer. Neither Warden Dios nor Hashi Lebwohl had understood how far he
would go when he was desperate.

Through
a red, squalling, visual knife of pain, he found the controls on his
chestplate, began frantically dialling changes to the polarisation.

By the
time the neural screaming eased enough to let him see again, he’d already
drifted more than fifty meters from
Trumpet
. Out toward the centre of
the storm, where
Soar
waited —

How
much time did he have left?

Fifty-five
seconds and counting, his computer reported.

Viciously
he toggled his jets; turned his trajectory with compressed gas so that he swung
back in
Trumpet’s
direction.

As fast
as his jets could take him, he gusted toward the place he wanted on his ship’s
flank.

He hit
hard; nearly missed his grip and bounced away. But machine reflexes saved him.
He closed his fingers on the cleat beside the access hatch.

Forty-seven
seconds.

Trying
to concentrate, forget pain and time limits, let his microprocessor carry him,
he keyed open the hatch.

Unlocking
it was another of the details he’d prepared before leaving the bridge.
Otherwise he would have had to shout to Davies or Morn, tell them what he
wanted, give them the codes. Now only his planning saved him. His breathing
rattled so thickly in his throat that he didn’t think he could speak, much less
shout.

The
hatch accessed the storage compartment which fed
Trumpet’s
singularity
grenades to their launcher.

Earlier
he’d wondered why his tormentors had bothered to equip the gap scout with
singularity grenades. They were almost impossible to use. Launching them was
easy enough: detonating them effectively was altogether more difficult.

At the
moment, however, he didn’t care what Dios’ or Lebwohl’s reasons might have
been.

Thirty-nine
seconds.

Quickly
he undipped the nearest grenade from its rack, levered it out of the
compartment. That part was simple in zero g. And the grenade was no bigger than
his chest: he could manage its size. But its mass was another matter. It
weighed — a database told him this — over 500 kg. It had inertia with a
vengeance. He could pull the device into motion, but he would have to red-line
his jets to make it stop.

He
couldn’t afford to fail. What was the good of all his reinforced strength, if
it wasn’t enough when he needed it?

Gasping
for courage as much as air, he heaved the grenade up, toggled his jets to full
power, and began to lift like a feather up the exposed curve of
Trumpet’s
side.

Twenty-four
seconds.

Unless
Davies’ estimate was wrong. Maybe
Soar
could see him already.

He didn’t
risk a look in that direction.

Move
, asshole! Motherfucking sonofabitch,
move it!

Above
the line which served him as
Trumpet’s
horizon, he shifted the vector of
his jets. Straining until he feared his sinews might snap, he fought the
grenade to a new heading.

Across
Trumpet’s
spine. Directly at the black asteroid. Down at the last moment toward the
narrowing space where
Trumpet
met the rock.

Seventeen
seconds.

He
couldn’t turn the grenade in time. It crashed into the asteroid. Shedding chips
and splinters like hail, it rebounded away.

He was
ready for it. He jammed the toe of one boot into a handgrip for an anchor: his
hips cocked urgently to aim his jets. With a final lurch that nearly dislocated
his arms, the grenade settled beside the ship and stopped moving.

Eleven
seconds.

Shit,
that was close! And he still wasn’t done. He needed to nudge the grenade back
upward until it was poised at the horizon. Then retrieve his small matter
cannon; take up his own position.

Somewhere
inside the lost crib of his EVA suit he had to find the strength to throw the
grenade at
Soar
.

He wasn’t
strong enough. No one was. UMCPDA had equipped him for any number of things,
but not for this. For the last time in his life his wrists and ankles were
tied
to the slats;
utterly bound. Nothing he’d ever been able to do would
prevent Sorus Chatelaine and the malign forces of the swarm from tearing him
apart.

“Angus.”
Davies’ sudden call seemed to crack open his head. Stress made his hearing wail
like feedback. “We’ve got company. Off to the side.” Davies gave coordinates
which only Angus’ computer understood. “She’s coming in fast.

“It’s
Free
Lunch
. The emission match is too close to be wrong.

“
God
,
Angus!
Now
what’re we going to do?”

Soar’s
ally. Here. Already.

It was
worse than being tied in his crib, worse than needles and pain. Angus wanted to
scream, but he was gasping too hard.

Clutching
like a wildman at cleats and handgrips, he wrenched his way up the hull to his
chosen horizon and looked out at the seething midnight of the swarm.

It
should have been too black for him to see anything. The erratic crackle and
flare of static couldn’t mitigate the dark. But in the deep distance the aurora
borealis of the Lab’s destruction still burned faintly, giving a nacreous,
fatal glow to some of the asteroids, limning others with evanescence. And
Soar’s
running lights were on, etching her against the void.

She was
there;
there
, directly in front of him; no more than fifteen k away.

And closing.

He
could see
Free Lunch
up past the point of his right shoulder, at the
edge of his faceplate’s field of view. She, too, had her running lights on. But
she was closer — God, she was
closer!
Five k at most. Point-blank range.

Angus
hadn’t planned for this. Nothing would help
Trumpet
against
two
attackers.

Helpless,
he was always helpless, always, there was nothing he could do. The abyss
hovered over him, loving and cruel. His own weakness tied him down: his own
failures and fears stuck him full of pain.

“Give
me orders!” Morn’s voice cried. “Angus, tell me what to do!”

“I can
see
Soar
!” Davies yelled. “They’re both ready to fire!

They’re
going to kill us!”

Tell me
what to do!

Morn
had set him free. Otherwise he might have given up and died. He would already
have died inside himself, driven mad by helplessness and coercion. But Morn had
set him free —

And his
equipment didn’t understand surrender. His programming made no provision for
it.

Desperately
he flipped back down
Trumpet’s
side, propped himself under the grenade,
and shouldered it into motion.

Then he
dove for his matter cannon.

That
was enough. He had weapons. And terror was strength. Morn had set him free. His
zone implants steadied him, refined his control, but took nothing away from his
stark urgency.

As the
grenade crested his horizon, he rose with it.

Stopped
it with a sharp blast of his jets.

Took
his position behind it.

He was
too late. In that instant
Free Lunch
opened fire.

A
second later
Soar
fired as well. Without transition the dark became a
caterwauling blaze of light and discontinuities as matter cannon unleashed pure
chaos.

But
they were firing at each other. God,
they were firing at each other!
One
of them had betrayed the other.
Trumpet
was too rich a prize to share.

And
they could afford to ignore the gap scout. She already looked dead.

If
Soar
had used her proton gun,
Free Lunch
would have been finished; torn
apart before she could deliver a second barrage. But Angus knew the energies of
matter cannon; recognised them when he saw them.
Soar
fought back in
kind —

That
gave
Free Lunch
the advantage. She’d fired first; would be able to
recharge her guns first. And she’d taken
Soar
by surprise. If either
ship could win this battle, it was likely to be
Free Lunch
.

He made
his choice by instinct — too quick for thought. Bracing himself, he heaved at
the grenade with every gram and fibre of his enhanced force; fired his jets
with all their power in the same direction.

What he
did should have been impossible. The grenade weighed 500 kg. And he was alone.
But he’d been made for this in ways he didn’t understand; trained for it in
ways he couldn’t imagine. Terror was strength. It was
life
. Trapped in
the crib of his suit, he strained for freedom so hard that watching him should
have broken his mother’s heart.

Somehow
he succeeded at launching the grenade straight at
Free Lunch’s
looming
mass.

It
would take forever to get there. Or it would have taken forever, but
Free
Lunch
continued to advance, improving her position and angle of fire
between barrages. She came to meet the grenade faster than the grenade itself
moved.

Angus
gave his computer a fraction of an instant to calculate relative trajectories,
estimate the point and moment of impact. Then he dropped to
Trumpet’s
hull.

Frantic
for speed, he clipped the belt of his suit to one of the handgrips; cinched it
tight so that he wouldn’t waver or fall away. He set his boots on the base of
the nearest particle sifter, dialled up their magnetic field to help him stay
in place. Swinging the muzzle of his gun around, he brought it to bear.

Another
barrage.
Free Lunch’s
lambent fire enclosed
Soar
like a penumbra
of ruin. Her sinks pulsed and burned like suns, throbbing to bleed off the
damage. Frenetically she blazed back at her attacker.

If her
fire hit the grenade before it reached
Free Lunch
— Before Angus could
fire himself —

“
Now!
”
he howled into his pickup. He could scream at last — scream from the pit of his
torn heart, even though his voice seemed to fall dead in the dark around him;
unheard; unheeded. “
Do it now! Hit those keys!
”

Indicators
inside his helmet yammered at him, warning of dehydration, temperature
overloads, exhausted jets, oxygen depletion. Clutching his matter cannon, he
waited in the crib at Morn’s mercy to find out whether he was going to live or
die.