Gap [1] The Real Story: The Gap into Conflict (13 page)

CHAPTER

16

T
wo days and more after her departure,
Bright Beauty
sputtered back into dock at Com-Mine Station.

The trip was harder and longer than Angus had anticipated. For the first time since Morn started crewing for him, he needed drugs to stay alert.

In fact, she accepted stim herself. The chore of maintaining the ship while he navigated wasn’t exhausting, but his refusal to stop for rest wore her down. She had a hot glitter in her eyes and a feverish patch of color on each cheek as he settled
Bright Beauty
into the berth Center assigned; she looked like a woman whose life was on the line.

He noticed that. Despite his own fatigue and the muzzy-headedness of drugs, he noticed everything about her. She needed sleep.

If he could have let her have it, he would have.

Unfortunately, there were Station inspectors pounding at his airlock. He’d ignored an order of curfew to go off after
Captain’s Fancy.
And the supply ship was still missing. The official search hadn’t found anything. And
Captain’s Fancy
hadn’t returned. A board of inquiry wanted to ask Angus Thermopyle questions. Until he answered them, he was effectively under arrest.

He couldn’t afford sleep. And he couldn’t afford to let Morn sleep. He needed her to back him up again.

He keyed off his console and got out of his g-seat, swearing uselessly at the force of Station gravity. “Shut her down,” he told Morn. “We’re going to be here for a while.” Then he added, “Don’t say anything. I’ll handle the fucking inspectors. You just sit there and do your best to look like a cop.”

She nodded once, tightly. With her hands on the console, she got to work rigging
Bright Beauty
for rest.

Angus was afraid he would never be able to warm his ship up again. But even that fear was good for something. Relying on it because he had so little anger or strength, he went to let the inspectors aboard.

They had a lot to say to him: they made a number of demands.

For once, what he told them came close to the exact truth.

I don’t give a shit about the supply ship. I was after Nick Succorso.

Really? A treasure like that—just waiting to be looted? Do you expect us to believe that, Captain Thermopyle?

Do you think I’m crazy? A supply ship? Angus didn’t have to fake his exasperation. If I put one finger on her, the sewage in DelSec would have me for breakfast. And I sure as hell wouldn’t come back here. With a treasure like that, I could buy all the repairs I need somewhere else.

Then what were you doing?

I already told you. I was after Succorso.

Why?

Deliberately Angus looked at Morn. That also was the truth, but it had the effect of a lie. Snarling, he said,
Succorso
was after the supply ship.

How do you know?

Shit! Why the fucking hell do you think he broke curfew and blinked out of here? Why do you think he hasn’t come back?

All right. What happened?

I never found the supply ship. He attacked me. Holed my thruster tube. The only thing I’ve done since then is crawl back here.

Why did he attack you?

With difficulty, Angus refrained from yelling. Take a guess.

Are you sure it was him?

No. You got any ideas who else would jump me out in the middle of fucking nowhere for no fucking reason?

The inspectors shrugged as if the list of people who might fit that description were endless.

You broke curfew, Captain Thermopyle. That charge will stick. You weren’t docked, but you were in Station control space. You’ll have to surrender your datacore.

The hell I will. I told you. I was after Succorso.

That changes nothing. You broke curfew.

I had orders. Again Angus turned his glare on Morn. I couldn’t obey them and you too.

Still she didn’t say anything. This time, however, she took out her UMCP id tag for the inspectors to worry about.

Faced with the unexplained possibilities she represented—the possibility, for instance, that she’d commandeered Angus Thermopyle’s ship to pursue Nick Succorso despite the curfew—the inspectors couldn’t shake Angus’ story. They searched
Bright Beauty
as well as they could without knowing her secrets, but they didn’t find anything. Finally they looked at the damaged thruster tube. It seemed to give them a certain amount of satisfaction.

If Captain Succorso comes in, we’ll treat him the same way we did you. If we find anything from that ship—anything at all—we’ll lock him up for the rest of his natural life. But if he’s clean, we’re not going to charge him for shooting at you. Not unless you can prove it was him. The inspectors smiled humorlessly. Not unless you hand over your datacore and let us read it.

Thanks so much, Angus rasped. You’re all heart. It’s a pleasure getting justice and decent treatment from you.

But he was too worn-out to feel much relief—or any hope. The ability to bluff the inspectors didn’t solve his problems.

He was forbidden to leave Station, of course, but that was a minor inconvenience under the circumstances. When the board of inquiry granted him temporary permission to disembark and make use of Com-Mine Station’s facilities, he escorted the inspectors off
Bright Beauty
and sealed the locks. Then he put Morn to bed asleep and climbed into his bunk because there was nothing else he could do.

A few hours later, he woke up in a sweat of alarm; a knife against his heart told him he’d forgotten something, neglected something. Something deadly. He seemed to be waking up from a dream in which a terrible mistake was made clear to him.

Now, however, what that mistake was drifted out of his grasp while his lungs heaved and his chest pounded.
Bright Beauty’s
air conditioning chilled the sweat on his skin, but didn’t do anything to cool off his fright.

Maybe it was just Station gravity weighing him down, making him feel leaden and defeated; maybe he was getting too old to shift easily between the presence and absence of g. He wasn’t used to thinking of himself as either old or young. In fact, he didn’t often pay much attention to his physical organism. But now he tried to comfort himself with physiological speculations.

He was getting old. He was having trouble adjusting to Station g. That was all.

No.

He’d forgotten something.

Nick’s taunts came back to him.

You’re beaten. Remember that. I warned you.

He still had no idea why Nick let him live.

Neglected something.

He went back to the beginning to try to reason it out.

The explanation had to do with Morn, of course. Nothing else made sense. Nick let him live because killing him would kill her as well. Nick was willing to risk her during the fight, for the sake of beating Angus Thermopyle, for the sake of repaying what Angus did to him; but after he won, he held back so she wouldn’t be hurt.

Really? Did that make sense?

Maybe not; but it was good enough to ease Angus’ distress a little. Rolling heavily out of his bunk, he scratched at the itch of sweat and grime inside his shipsuit, used the head, dabbed antiseptic from the sickbay on his swollen lip, and lumbered into the command module.

Almost at once, he saw the blip signaling automatically on his board.

He froze.

It was one of the alerts he’d programmed to warn him if Morn tried anything off-limits at her console.

For a moment—just for a moment—he didn’t care what the alert actually was. He was stunned by the impossibility of the situation. He’d never given her a chance to do anything. He watched her all the time. When
Bright Beauty
was shut down, there wasn’t any blip. Was that right? He scoured his memory. Yes, that was right. No blip then. And after that he’d put her to sleep.
When
could she have set it off?

No. The recognition hit him harder than the alert itself. He was remembering wrong. He
had
given her a chance.

He’d left her alone in the command module while he went to let the inspectors aboard. And again when they went away. And after that he hadn’t so much as glanced at his own controls. He’d been too busy with the inquiry—too tired—

Too beaten—

Oh, shit.

Jerking into motion, he stabbed buttons on his console to identify the alert.

It was so far from what he expected that at first he couldn’t believe it. The computer must be making a mistake. Surely she’d done something worse than
that?
Wasn’t she trying to kill him, get even with him? Didn’t she want to sabotage
Bright Beauty?

But of course the computer wasn’t making a mistake. It showed clearly that Morn had jimmied the locks on one of
Bright Beauty’s
exterior hatches, fixed them so they didn’t seal. Then she’d disconnected the automatic signal which warned of an unlocked hatch.

That was ridiculous. His brain reeled, groping. Unselfconsciously he wiped blood off his chin. What had Morn accomplished? The hatch still closed securely. His ship still had integrity against the void.

But now—

—now the hatch could be opened from outside.

Anybody with an EVA suit could sneak aboard.

Anybody with an EVA suit could have sneaked aboard while Angus was asleep.

Shitshitshitshit.

He was so surprised and lost that he jumped to all the wrong conclusions. He checked on Morn first, half-expecting to discover she was already gone. But she still slept where he’d left her under the influence of her zone implant. So then he tuned
Bright Beauty’s
life-sign scanners to read the whole ship for stowaways, hidden murderers, saboteurs.

There was no one else aboard: just Morn and himself.

You’re beaten. Remember that. I warned you.

Finally panic brought him a burst of inspiration. He went to look in his secret holds.

They were full from deck to ceiling with food, equipment, and medicine.

Every crate and carton bore the seal which identified it as the property of Com-Mine Station—the kind of supplies Com-Mine received from Earth. The kind of supplies a supply ship would carry.

When he went back to the command module and scanned around him, he saw
Captain’s Fancy
in dock hardly fifty meters away. She’d come in while he was asleep.

He was trapped. Finished. Dead.

The perfection of it astonished him. No wonder Nick had seemed more than willing to encounter him in the doorway of Mallorys. That gave Nick the chance to say the word “hatch” in front of Morn. And with that slender link between them they found a way to destroy the man they hated.

“Slender” was too strong a word for it. It was slim to the point of nonexistence. Nevertheless Angus believed it instantly.

You’re hatching something.

What else had she ever had to hope for?

Why don’t you open up about it?

What else did she have left?

Let someone in to help you.

From the moment when she’d heard those words, she must have clung to them, searching them for meaning, chewed them inside and out. In her place, he would have done the same thing. Desperate for rescue, she must have worked like a maniac to find some interpretation which could save her.

And Nick’s attack showed her he was serious, showed her she had reason to hope.

That was all she needed. When she got the chance, she did something about it.

No, it wasn’t enough. It might have been enough for Morn in her desperation, but it wasn’t enough for Nick. He would need to
know
she understood him.

What else had he said?

You’ve got it in your pocket right now. Or are you playing with yourself?

Angus had assumed that was a reference to the zone-implant control; a lucky guess. But now another possibility occurred to him. Like everything else Nick had said, it was aimed at Morn.

There had been plenty of time during the scuffle for Nick’s people to put a note in Morn’s pocket. A note she would have found later, read, and then destroyed.

A note which told her what Nick wanted her to do.

That was why Nick had allowed Angus to arrange their encounter so easily. So that his people could give Morn his message.

The rest of the plot was simple.

There never was a supply ship. No, of course not. The distress call was a fake, engineered by Nick Succorso and his ally in Security. If the supply ship had been genuine, Security could have given him advance warning; but the emergency on which the plot depended couldn’t have been predicted. Therefore the whole thing hadn’t happened. The distress call had been faked to lure Angus away from Com-Mine—to set the stage for his ruin.

With a way to sneak aboard
Bright Beauty
, did Nick have Angus killed? Did he simply kidnap Morn? Of course not. A murder would have caused serious trouble for Nick. Despite Angus Thermopyle’s reputation, Security would have done everything possible to nail his killer—if for no other reason than to demonstrate its own integrity. And if Morn disappeared from
Bright Beauty
while Angus was left alive, Nick would never be able to rest for fear of Angus’ revenge.

No, the trap was perfect. By filling
Bright Beauty’s
holds with supplies provided—no doubt—by his ally in Security, Nick was able to arrange for Angus’ destruction without risking Morn. Or himself.

Now all he had to do was give the inspectors some evidence that a crime had been committed. Then they would have the legal right to appropriate
Bright Beauty’s
datacore. That would enable them to find the secret holds. It would inform them of the murder of those miners. And it might give them a clue about Morn’s zone implant: the sickbay log was blank; but the datacore contained evidence of the parallel control he’d programmed into his board.

A life sentence for the theft of Station supplies. And the death penalty for murder, if not for the use of a zone implant.