This Day All Gods Die (17 page)

When he hurt her, he hurt himself.

That was the story of his whole fucking life. For years, decades, he'd raped and killed and beaten and destroyed with all his strength. And after every act of violence his choices had dwindled. His freedom shrank. No matter what he did, he sank deeper into his personal abyss—

the void of terror and pain

from which he'd always fled.

Until Morn released him from his priority-codes.

His programming still restricted him in more ways than he could count; but now no one had the power to compel his allegiance.

And he'd survived the crib. Alone outside the ship in his EVA suit, hammered by the energies of warships and the swarm and a black hole, he'd fallen into the pure, blind, helpless agony he'd always feared; and he'd survived.

He definitely didn't want Morn to go away.

But it was more than that; worse than not meaning to hurt her. He didn't want her to think she couldn't reach him. Didn't want her to feel helpless—

"I hear you." His voice was a dry scrape in his throat.

"Don't push me. I've got a lot to think about."

God, what was the matter with him? What was he going to do next?—

beg her to fucking forgive him?

No. Not now: not ever. He was alive, God damn it, in spite of everything. He'd survived the crib. He was Angus Thermopyle, not some shit-crazy philanthropist who wanted or maybe even needed to apologize for living.

"Thank God." Morn's relief was as plain as a message from his datacore. Despite her loathing, she didn't wish him dead.

We need you. You've got to wake up.

Which didn't make any sense. Ciro sabotaged the drives!

Then why the hell was Trumpet still alive? How had she survived? Where was she?

Davies had said, The cops are coming after us. Angus had heard that. We're sending out a Class-1 homing signal. Then Davies had asked as if he thought Angus had the answer hidden away somewhere, Whose side is that cruiser on?

What the fuck was going on?

He decided to move. But he couldn't: the table's restraints held him. He flexed against them, then remembered what they were for. To keep him still while sickbay—

and Davies—

oper-

ated on him. To protect him from g.

"If you'll let me out of these damn straps," he croaked,

"I'll sit up."

If you trust me that much.

While he waited, he asked his computer for a status report.

Internal diagnostics informed him that he'd suffered a dislocated hip (corrected), severe dehydration (treated), and massive hemorrhaging (stopped). Blood chemistry analysis reported appropriately high levels of metabolins, coagulants, analgesics, antibiotics. Prognosis: complete recovery in forty-eight hours.

All of his welded resources were functional. If he had to, he could cut his way out of the restraints.

But Morn had already begun to tug awkwardly at his fet-ters, releasing them one after another. The moment he was free, he rolled over and swung his legs off the table.

Pain lanced through his hip as he moved. Maybe he shouldn't have tried to use his suit jets against the singularity's pull. Or maybe that small extra support was all that had saved him.

Almost instantly his zone implants muffled the sensation.

Only a residual throbbing ache remained to remind him that he needed more time to heal.

Anchored on the edge of the table, he looked at Morn for the first time since he'd left the bridge to risk EVA in the swarm.

She floated an arm's length away. "We let you sleep as long as we could," she said at once. Anxiety complicated her tone. She seemed to speak quickly so that she wouldn't freeze; so that her loathing wouldn't get the better of her. "But we're out of time. There's another ship on scan. Resumed tard five minutes ago. We've got id.

"It's Punisher. A UMCP cruiser. The same ship we passed when we first reached human space." She faltered, then finished, "The same one that ordered you to give Nick your priority-codes."

She appeared to think Angus would consider that detail significant; but he didn't. He wasn't listening.

Rest had done her some good: he saw that at a glance.

The young woman's beauty of her face was gone, permanently eroded by suffering and desperation. Stark against her pale features, her eyes were as dark as caves. Nevertheless sleep or food—

or both—

had improved her skin tone and restored some of the elasticity to her muscles. It had eased the deep-cut lines around her mouth, between her brows, at the corners of her eyes.

He dismissed those details as soon as he noticed them, however. His attention was caught by the cast which encased her right arm in acrylic from shoulder to wrist; by the straps which closed her arm against her chest.

At the sight, black rage came to fire in him as suddenly as the explosion of an incendiary grenade. Only his zone implants kept him from launching himself at her, grabbing her, shaking her to learn the truth.

Nearly choked by dark flame, he demanded harshly,

"Who did that to you?"

In about a minute the bastard responsible was going to find himself strangling on his own balls.

A small wince plucked at the side of her face. "I did it to myself," she answered thinly. "That's how I controlled my gap-sickness. While I was at the command board."

To herself. He swore through his teeth. To herself? He believed her instantly. And he wanted to slap her.

"You're crazy, you know that?" he rasped. "Out of your goddamn mind. You know what g does to you. How many times"—

he started shouting, had to shout so that he wouldn't hit her—

"did I tell you to leave the fucking bridge?"

Her forehead knotted into a frown. She was afraid of him, always afraid of him. But she was also stronger than he was.

Even when she was terrified, she knew how to concentrate.

"Angus," she pronounced distinctly, "we don't have time for this. A lot's been happening. You've been asleep for—

"

"I know." His computer supplied the information. "Six hours." More than enough time for every enemy he'd ever had to line up and take shots at him. "And before that I was unconscious. In stasis."

His fury needed a better outlet. He hungered for violence.

Anything that hurt Morn hurt him, and he wanted to repay it.

Nevertheless he made an effort to match her. We need you.

With the support of his zone implants, he imposed calm on the avid fire crackling inside him.

"Punisher is after us," he went on. "You said that already. And Ciro sabotaged the drives. Davies said that." Beyond question the thrusters were dead. He couldn't hear the muted hull-roar of an active drive. "Tell me something I don't know."

Where are we? How did we get here?

I saw Free Lunch die. Where's Soar?

What do you want from me?

Morn caught her lip between her teeth as if she were restraining a retort. With a visible effort, she swallowed her impatience. After a moment she nodded slowly.

"I'm sorry. I forgot how much I need to tell you. And we're out of time—

" She grimaced. "But I can't very well ask you to help us if I don't explain what kind of help I want.

"I was asleep myself for most of it. But Davies, Mikka, and Vector told me the story."

Angus wrapped artificial calm around his black fires and braced himself to listen hard.

"We got away from that black hole," she reported flatly.

The strain of suppressing her urgency made the darkness in the caves of her eyes seethe. "I guess that's obvious. We knew you were still alive because we could hear you breathing over your suit pickup. By then I was"—

she referred to her arm

with a glance—

"finished, so Vector brought you in. Mikka and Davies took us out to the edge of the swarm.

"But we were stuck. Both Punisher and Calm Horizons were there. How Calm Horizons found us I don't know." Punisher had followed Trumpet's homing signal, of course—

at

least until Nick had turned it off. "The same way Soar did, I guess.

"Punisher and Calm Horizons blazed at each other the whole time. According to Davies, Punisher was trying to cover us. But Calm Horizons has that super-light proton cannon.

And she knew where we were. We were hidden by asteroids, but she still fixed our position somehow. There was nothing Mikka and Davies could do. But just when Calm Horizons was about to smash us, Soar showed up and opened fire on her."

Morn raised her hands to ward off questions. "I can't explain that either." Angus didn't try to interrupt, however.

He assumed she was telling the truth. If she lied, he could learn the truth by looking at Trumpet's log. And for right now he cared only about the facts. Explanations meant nothing to him unless they helped him predict what his enemies would do.

Tensely Morn continued, "I guess Calm Horizons couldn't handle both Punisher and Soar. She used her proton cannon to destroy Soar.

"Then she needed time to recharge. That gave us a chance. Before she could fire again, Mikka burned out of the swarm and hit the gap, got us away from Massif-5. We're 1.4

light-years out in the middle of nowhere."

Triggered by numbers, Angus' computer began multitask-ing seamlessly. Involuntary astrogation databases scrolled through his head, extrapolating possible positions. Nevertheless he missed nothing Morn said; nothing she appeared to feel.

She sighed. "So far, so good. Unfortunately no one knew what Ciro was doing. He must have thought he still had to obey Sorus Chatelaine. He found his way into the drive spaces somehow. Whatever he did to the drives knocked them out right after we resumed tard. Since then we've been coasting.

Living on the energy cells.

"Now Punisher's found us. And she's overtaking us fast.

Give her thirty minutes, and we'll be in point-blank range. If she wants to, she can catch us in two hours—

if she's willing to

put off deceleration that long and brake that hard."

Through his datalink, damage-control schematics overlaid potential starfields. Diagnostic parameters and repair protocols marshaled themselves for use. But he also noticed the particular tightening of Morn's muscles; the squirming shadows behind her gaze when she mentioned the cruiser.

She was a cop. She should have been fucking delighted to see a UMCP warship. But she wasn't. She dreaded that vessel more than she feared Angus himself.

This was something he needed to understand.

"What does she want?" he asked as soon as Morn paused.

Her eyes flared bitterly. "How should I know?"

A feral grin twisted his mouth. "What does she say she wants? Is she talking?"

Morn sagged a little. Apparently he was pushing close to the sources of her urgency.

"Emergency UMCP hailing," she answered dully.

"We've been ordered to slow down, let her come alongside.

Maybe her scan hasn't figured out yet that we've lost thrust."

Again Morn bit her lip. "This is difficult for me," she said unnecessarily. "I'm torn—

"Angus," she broke out suddenly, "Min Donner is aboard that ship. Min Donner." The UMCP Enforcement Division director. "God knows what she's doing there." For a moment Morn sounded baffled; wracked by uncertainty. Then she tapped an anger of her own. Weeks of suffering and self-expenditure had whetted her to a knife's edge. "Somebody saw this coming a hell of a long way off. She must have joined ship before Punisher left UMCPHQ for the Com-Mine belt.

"She's doing all the talking. Like she thinks we wouldn't listen to anyone else."

A long way off, shit, Angus thought. That was the goddamn truth. The same man who'd switched his datacore so that he could rescue Morn and then sent him out with Milos Taverner primed to betray him had planned for this situation as well.

Morn hadn't stopped. She was saying, "If there's anybody honest left in the UMCP, it's her. But I'm just not sure—

''

She straightened her shoulders. "Punisher isn't threatening us. But she has us on targ. Her matter cannon are charged and tracking. She could open fire the minute we say something she doesn't want to hear."

Angus recognized the danger; but he refused to be deflected from what he needed to know. "What about Calm Horizons?" he pursued. "Did the cops finish her?"

That question probed Morn even more deeply. She winced in spite of her anger.

"We don't know. When we went into tach, they were still shooting at each other. Davies says Calm Horizons was hurt.

Maybe Punisher got her. Or maybe not. According to Mikka, Punisher looked hurt herself.

"We didn't see any other ships. I guess VI hadn't had time to muster a response."

Angus chewed his concern for Morn while his computer spun scenarios, crunched possibilities: the likelihood that he could repair the drives quickly; the risks of a second cold ignition; other, more extreme options. Despite the complexity of the programs running in the back of his head, however, his concentration on Morn held.

•

Was she this worried just because Calm Horizons had committed an act of war? No, that wasn't it. He'd missed something. She was afraid for reasons he hadn't thought of yet.

Looking for answers, he changed directions, came at her from another side.

"All right," he said as if he'd heard enough. "None of this makes any sense, but I can live without explanations.

What do you want me to do?"

His hands gripped the edge of the surgical table, holding him there against the pressure of her alarm, his computer's demands, and his own needs.

What do you think I fucking can do under these conditions?

She took a deep breath. Her gaze sank to his hands as if she were watching his knuckles whiten. Then she lifted her eyes sharply back to his. No matter what she feared, she remained strong enough to face him.

"I want you to keep us away from Punisher," she announced distinctly, as if she thought he had that kind of power.

"She fought Calm Horizons for us. She gave Davies your priority-codes. But she also handed you over to Nick. I don't trust her. I trust Min Donner—