The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (11 page)

His own
calculations were quicker.

Trumpet
wasn’t moving fast enough to outrun Thanatos Minor’s debris.

“Too
close!” he rasped urgently. “Hit it again, Nick! You cut it too close!”

Nick
sprawled across the second’s station. His eyes were glazed; his hands fumbled
for a grip they couldn’t find on the sides of his board. He’d been hurt too much:
Angus had punched him in the forehead hard enough to crack his skull; Ciro had
jolted him with stun; his ship and most of his crew were dead. Lashed by g, he’d
gone limp — too limp to react.

Angus’
brain and his computer ran decisions at microprocessor speeds, but on separate
tracks. Driven by pre-programmed exigencies, his fingers punched keys like
scattershot, routing helm control back to his station, adjusting thrust for
more power than Nick had known
Trumpet
possessed, defining gap
parameters for human space. At the same time, his brain scrambled to identify
his exact location, gauge it against the possibility of pursuit. According to
his most recent data — only seconds old — neither
Soar
nor
Calm
Horizons
had picked up enough velocity to attempt a gap crossing. And
certainly not in this direction. But
Stonemason
and some of the other
ships from Billingate were another matter. Milos must have told the Amnion why
Angus had been sent to Thanatos Minor. If the Amnion had told the Bill somehow
— if the Bill had flared out a warning —

They
would know where to look for the gap scout.

Cued by
his urgency, perhaps, or by some other in-built latitude, his datacore let
Angus reset the gap parameters and throw
Trumpet
into another brutal
course shift.

Klaxons
wailed like the damned. Millions of tons of shattered rock hurtled closer, hot
on the heels of the wave front. The displays plotted both brisance and stone as
they scoured the void like furies: the ragged teeth of nightmares.

For
half a dozen seconds, the gap scout hauled herself to the side so hard that
only his zone implants kept Angus from passing out.

Nick
collapsed against his restraints, unconscious. But welded reinforcements gave
Angus the strength to endure.
Trumpet
was still turning — still
broadside to the storm of Thanatos Minor’s ruin — when he reached out against a
weight of six or more g’s and tapped the key which sent the gap scout into
tach.

The
violence which had riven the planetoid didn’t touch her.

 _

 _

Instead, with a
disorienting lack of transition, she found herself perilously far down the
gravity well of a red giant nearly three light-years deep in Amnion space.

Moving
too quickly for caution, Angus hadn’t consulted astrogation — except by an
almost autonomic reference to his internal databases — or made any attempt at
precision; he’d simply pointed
Trumpet
at the nearest loud star he knew
of and kicked her into the gap.

Luck
and a near-miraculous synergy between his organic mind and his machine reflexes
brought him close without killing him.

A red
giant was exactly what he wanted: relatively low in mass, so that he could get
nearer to it than to a heavier star; and relatively high in luminosity as well
as other radiation, so that it might cover
Trumpet’s
trail. He hoped
that brisance and debris would confuse the traces of his manoeuvring near
Thanatos Minor, prevent other ships from seeing where he’d gone. And if that
didn’t work, he hoped that a star as loud as this one would make
Trumpet
impossible to detect.

The gap
scout was still accelerating at full burn, ramming herself down the gravity
well at a frightening rate. Minutes away, immolation loomed ahead of her.
Despite his zone implants and enhanced strength, Angus was giddy with g-stress.
Phosphors seemed to dance across his board, disabling the readouts; the tidal
pressure of his pulse in his ears made the new alarms which the ship flung at
him sound muffled and imprecise, vaguely meaningless.

But now
his visceral fear and his computer’s programming worked together. One
centimetre at a time, they forced his hand forward until his fingers found the
keys which would ease
Trumpet
‘s
thrust and turn her aside from
danger in a long curve across the pull of the well.

Then he
was able to breathe again.

Sweet
oxygen filled his lungs as the pressing weight of his body lifted. Relief
spread a brief red haze across his vision, then wiped it clear. At the first
touch of acceleration, automatic systems had locked the bridge in its thrust
attitude, retracted the companionway. Now, as Angus stabilised
Trumpet’s
position in the red giant’s well, the orientation bearings unlocked, allowing
the bridge to revolve within its hulls to accommodate the star’s gravity. His
back and legs settled more comfortably into his g-seat.

Nick
folded slowly over his belts and remained limp, breathing through his mouth.

A few
more helm adjustments, and Angus would be able to relax. His computer ran
calculations: his hands ran commands. When he was done,
Trumpet
had
attained an elliptical orbit which would carry her around the star, absorbing
gravity as momentum, and then enable her to slingshot herself back in the
direction of human space at several times her present velocity. Fast enough for
a gap crossing which would take her three or four light-years past the Amnion
frontier.

There.
Angus sucked air deep enough to distend his belly and held it until the CO
₂
balance in his lungs had slowed his heart rate a few beats. God, he was
thirsty! Thanks to Milos’ abuse, and to the dehydration he’d suffered in his
EVA suit, his mouth and throat felt like they’d been scoured with abrasives. A
grainy sensation afflicted his eyeballs, as if they turned in grit. He was
hungry and tired, and there was nothing he wanted right then more than a chance
to check on Morn, find out if she was all right; touch her as if she still
belonged to him.

His
datacore had already allowed or coerced him to do several things he hadn’t
expected. Maybe it would permit that as well.

Except
that she had her zone implant control now. Or rather Davies did: it came to the
same thing. Neither of them was likely to let him within ten meters of her. Not
without force — and Angus didn’t believe for a second that his datacore would
let him force himself on Morn Hyland. Warden Dios hadn’t gone to all this
trouble to rescue her — and to keep it a secret, for God’s sake — just so that
Angus could ease the dark ache in the pit of his heart.

Slowly
he stretched out the muscles in his back and arms, then returned his attention
to his board.

Trumpet’s
course was stable. The red giant spat out so much radiation that he
could hardly scan her trace himself, even though he knew where to look. And
within an hour the star’s tremendous bulk would eclipse her from the direction
of Thanatos Minor: she would be safe from pursuit or detection until she
rounded the giant’s far side.

If he
couldn’t approach Morn, he could at least drink several litres of fluid and get
himself something to eat. Nick could be left where he was. He appeared to be
asleep, overcome by the combined pressure of loss and g. And if he woke up, he
couldn’t do any harm. It was a simple matter for Angus to disable both bridge
stations with his own priority-codes, which would effectively frustrate any
tampering or interference.

He’d
unstrapped his restraints and started to his feet before he realised that he
didn’t understand what he’d just done.

Wait a
minute. He sat down again in shock. Wait a fucking minute.

What
the hell are we doing
here?

At that
moment Nick stirred. Twitching, his hands found the edges of the second’s station;
he braced his arms there to push himself upright. His eyes were dull with
stupor. He blinked them deliberately, trying to clear them. His mouth hung
open. Through the grime on his cheeks, his scars showed like small strips of
bone.

By
degrees a frown tightened his face as he blinked at his readouts.

He
checked the screens in front of him, considered his readouts again. Unsteadily
he tapped two or three keys. Then he turned his stunned gaze toward Angus.

As if
he and Angus had the same thoughts for the same reasons, he asked, “What the
hell are we doing
here?
”

“Hiding,”
Angus retorted. “What does it look like?” He had no idea what the truth was.
Appalled by chagrin and incomprehension, he couldn’t think. In a few instants
of gap travel, a few minutes of mad flight, everything had changed. Suddenly
his predicament was profoundly altered, as profoundly as it had been by his
datacore’s unexpected decision to rescue Morn, or by hearing Warden Dios say,
It’s
got to stop
; by his discovery of Morn herself aboard
Starmaster
, or
by UMCPDA’s req. Once again nothing made any sense, he had to start learning
the rules and guessing the limits from the beginning—

“‘Hiding.’”
Nick made an obvious effort to sound sarcastic, but he couldn’t raise his voice
above a thin mutter. “Who the fuck are we hiding
from?
I didn’t bring us
here. I must have passed out — you took the helm. Christ! Angus, we’re three
fucking light-years inside Amnion space. If you could generate that kind of gap
crossing, why didn’t you head the other way? Solve all your problems at once,
let fucking Hashi Lebwohl welcome you with open fucking arms. What kind of shit
is
this?”

Good
question. Angus would have said that aloud, if his programming had permitted
it. UMCPDA had welded him precisely and explicitly for this mission. Either
Hashi Lebwohl or Warden Dios had made every crucial decision. So what was Angus
doing
here?
Why had his datacore led him to take this course, when it
could have, should have, forced him to leap for human space?

“
Calm
Horizons
was after us,” he suggested weakly.

“And
you thought she would follow us past the frontier?” Nick did his best to sneer.
“Commit an act of war right in the cops’ face? So what? She couldn’t have
caught us. We had momentum on her, we had a vector she couldn’t match. And we’ve
got” — he clicked keys, peered at a readout for confirmation, then hissed
softly through his teeth in surprise — “shit, Angus, this ship has a
thrust-to-mass ratio a lumbering tub like that can’t compete with. Once she
gets going, she can probably keep up with us in tach, but she can’t match us in
normal space.

“Don’t
tell me you came here to hide from
her
.” Despite the dullness in his
eyes and the pallor of his scars, he was recovering some of his energy. “I
couldn’t believe that even if I used both hands.”

Angus
couldn’t believe it himself. And yet it was the truth. He himself, Angus
Thermopyle — not his datacore, not Dios or Lebwohl — had made the decision to
come here because
Calm Horizons
,
Soar
and maybe some of the Bill’s
ships were after him.

Echoing
Nick involuntarily, he protested in dismay, What kind of shit
is
this?

Then,
like another echo, he remembered the last time his programming had spoken to
him directly. When Milos had attempted to take control of him in the Amnion
sector of Billingate, a soundless voice in his head had countermanded Milos’
orders.

You
are no longer Joshua.

Jerico
priority has been superseded.

You
are Isaac. That is your name. It is also your access-code.

Your
priority-code is Gabriel.

“Shut
up,” he told Nick. Let me think. “I don’t care whether you believe it or not.
If I wanted you to know what my reasons are, I would have explained them
already.”

Access-code
Isaac, he told the gap in his brain which served as a datalink. Why did you let
me come here? Why didn’t I have to head straight for UMCPHQ?

His
datacore replied with a silence so complete that it seemed to resonate in his
skull.

That
fit. Although his computer had supplied him with vast impersonal bodies of
information on such subjects as astrogation,
Trumpet’s
design, and
fusion generators, it’d never revealed anything about itself. Dios had promised
him,
Your programming will tell you what you need as you go along.
However, no one had ever offered him any kind of explanation.

The
intercom chimed. “Angus, what’s happening?” Davies’ voice sounded ragged with g
and helplessness. “Where are we? Can I wake up Morn yet? Is it safe?”

More
vehemently than he realised, Angus hit commands on his board to disable all the
ship’s intercoms.

He
couldn’t suffer more distractions: he needed to
understand
.

Had
Warden Dios or Hashi Lebwohl finally lost him? Had he somehow passed beyond the
limits of his programming; broken free?

Or were
his tormentors simply playing a deeper game than he could imagine?

God,
was it possible that he’d
broken free?