The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order (8 page)

The
codes were false. Perhaps they’d never been true. Or perhaps they’d been
changed recently. In either case, it was clear that
Captain’s Fancy
had
feigned helplessness, not in order to prepare an attack on
Soar —
as
Sorus had assumed — but rather to defend the raiding party from
Trumpet
which had entered the Amnion sector.

In
other words, events weren’t moving as the Amnion wanted — or predicted. The
understandings which they’d shared with her prior to the arrival of the shuttle’s
passengers were inaccurate.

And
Trumpet
was behaving no more predictably than
Captain’s Fancy
.

Such
things forewarned Sorus before Milos Taverner told her what he knew of the
danger. By the time
Calm Horizons
ordered her to the warship’s support
against
Trumpet
, she’d already rigged her ship for battle or collision,
and had begun putting distance between herself and Thanatos Minor.

Her
preparations and those extra k proved critical. When Thanatos Minor exploded,
Soar
had every gun trained, not on
Trumpet
, but on the dark rock; had
every force screen and mass deflector on that side at full power. And Sorus had
reoriented her ship to present the stone barrage with the smallest possible
profile.

Soar
endured the mad, hurtling onslaught of debris by
blasting stone to powder before it hit; by deflecting some impacts and
absorbing others. The shock wave tossed her toward oblivion as if she’d
received a direct hit from
Calm Horizons’
super-light proton cannon; but
then the concussion ran on past her, leaving her battered and reeling, but
whole.

And
Calm
Horizons
survived in much the same way. The warship’s profile was larger,
of course. On the other hand, she was considerably farther from the centre of
the blast. And her guns — not to mention her targ — were superior to
Soar’s
:
able to destroy more of the careening rock before it hit.

After
the explosion, Thanatos Minor was gone.

Only two
ships remained — the two which had received Milos Taverner’s warning. Every
other vessel in this quadrant of space had been torn apart and scattered along
the subatomic winds of the dark.
Soar’s
receivers could pick up the
blind fallout of the blast, the enharmonic squalling of the debris, the
thunderous distortion of the aftershock, but no voices.

Sorus
clutched at the arms of her g-seat, fighting acceleration stress and nausea.
The wave front had flung her against her restraints as easily as if she were an
empty shipsuit: she felt like she’d been hit with a stun-prod. She wasn’t young
anymore, couldn’t suffer this kind of abuse without paying for it. The clamour
of shouts and the yowl of klaxons across the bridge told her that she was still
alive, that her ship was still alive — but not for how long.

A blast
like that could have broken
Soar’s
back, or torn the ship’s core open to
hard vacuum; could have snapped conduits like twigs, cracked drive housings,
crumpled vanes and antennae, ruptured fuel cells —

The
displays in front of her had gone crazy or blind; g pulled at her stomach,
partly because of the blast, partly because she’d shut down internal spin to
improve
Soar’s
manoeuvrability. Despite the racket of pain in her head,
the pressure like haemorrhage in her lungs, she hauled herself upright by main
strength and struggled to clear her vision.

“Damage
report!” she barked through the clamour. “Ship’s status!”

Her
command seemed to open a space for itself through the noise and confusion. “We’ve
been hit!” her data first shouted back, “three times, no, four!” giving her
information as fast as it came to his readouts. “Deflectors and screens couldn’t
hold.

“One
hit along the prow, glancing blow, no penetration, no structural damage. One
five-meter dent in the outer hull amidships, leaks at the seams, automatic
systems have it under control,” pumping plexulose plasma sealant into the gap
between the hulls. “One took out a midship deflector vane.”

“Captain!”
called the communications first. “
Calm Horizons
wants —”

Sorus
cut off the interruption with a slash of her hand. She didn’t want to hear
anything else until she knew the condition of her ship.

The
data first hadn’t stopped.” — must be why the last one hit so hard. Breached a
cargo bay. Interior bulkheads show green, no leakage. But we can’t seal a hole
that size. Damn rock’s still in there, along with what’s left of the cargo.”

Sorus
snatched a breath into her sore lungs. “Injury report.”

The
data first hit more keys. “Four so far, five, six — that’s all. Impact stress,
mostly — contusions, breaks, whiplash. No casualties.”

“Captain
—” communications demanded again.

“I’m
fucking blind,” the scan first protested to no one in particular. “Can’t see a
fucking thing.” She flapped her hands as if she were trying to clear away
smoke. “All this fucking distortion!”

Sorus
ignored them both; she ignored Milos Taverner’s bulk almost directly in front
of her. “Helm?”

The man
at the helm station shrugged. “We’re still riding blast inertia. Away from
Thanatos Minor. If there’s anything left of it. But I can’t tell you where we
actually are until we get scan back.”

“Or who
else survived,” scan put in harshly.

Sorus
felt that fear herself — the cold, visceral dread of running blind down the
black gullet of the void — but there was nothing she could do about it.

Another
voice cut at her attention.

“Captain.
Calm Horizons
must be answered. It is imperative.”

That
was the other half-mutated human, Marc Vestabule. He stood at the
communications station. Like Milos Taverner in front of Sorus, he’d planted
himself there by clamping his hands to the sides of the board; he seemed immune
to the receding g of the concussion, immovable. Before the blast had reduced
reception to gibberish, he’d been talking to
Calm Horizons
, presumably
giving the Amnion warship the same information Milos Taverner had given her —
and asking the same questions.

“Then
do it,” she snapped back at him. “Just don’t bother me.”

Apparently
calm, Marc Vestabule released one hand to take a receiver from the communications
board and jack it into his ear. Then he accepted a pickup from the
communications first. At once — but without any discernible urgency — he began
to make alien noises into the pickup.

That
was the thing Sorus Chatelaine distrusted or loathed or feared most about the
Amnion. None of them ever showed any urgency; any ordinary mortal dread or
desperation. The pilot and guard which had accompanied Vestabule and Taverner
aboard the shuttle still stood by the bridge doors, bracing themselves there as
quietly as if nothing had happened. As for Taverner himself —

In
almost every way, he looked as human as she was. Perhaps more so: his pudgy
face and besmirched scalp, his nic-stained fingers and pallid skin, conveyed an
impression of flaws, frailties. Only anger could have given his face dignity.
On his features any other emotion would have looked like self-pity.

Nevertheless
she knew that he was an Amnioni — as single-minded and unshakeable as Marc
Vestabule; as the shuttle’s pilot and guard; as every member of the crew which
served
Calm Horizons
. The signs were unmistakable.

His
eyes betrayed the working of the mutagens which had taken away his identity.
They were an acrid yellow colour, lidless, with deformed irises like slits;
they made his physical softness and his unnatural calm seem somehow demonic,
like a glimpse of damnation. Genetic transformation had altered everything
about him except his appearance: rearranged his DNA strings, restructured the
fundamental, definitive encryption of his nucleotides, until only a detached
and sometimes imprecise memory-pool remained of the former deputy chief of
Com-Mine Station Security.

Sorus
was familiar with the process. She’d known Marc Vestabule for years.

Irritated
at the way Taverner watched her as if nothing she did could surprise him, she
snapped past him, “Scan, I want a
report!
”

“I told
you, Captain, I’m blind,” the scan first answered defensively. “There’s too
much fucking distortion all across the spectrum, the instruments can’t —”

“Then
fix
it,” Sorus retorted. “Filter it somehow. Tell the computer what happened so it
can compensate. I want to know what’s
out
there.”

“Captain.”
Vestabule turned his bifurcated gaze at her, one eye human, the other Amnion. “
Calm
Horizons
reports no other surviving vessels. The planetoid Thanatos Minor
no longer exists. You are in no danger. Distortion should recede to the
tolerances of your equipment in four minutes.
Calm Horizons
has
identified your position. Co-ordinates will be transmitted to your helm.”

Sorus
nodded sharply. The helm and communications officers hit keys to route
information between their stations.

“More
data follows when you are ready to receive it,” Vestabule added.

“Not
yet,” she told him. “I’ve got other priorities.

“Data,
give me damage assessment on that holed cargo bay. And a repair estimate for
the deflector vane.”

With
her thumb, she punched open a ship-wide intercom channel. “All hands secure for
g. I’m going to reengage internal spin. Get to sickbay if you need it. The rest
of us have work to do. Damage control says we’re still true, but I don’t trust
it. We were hit too hard. Report
anything
that makes you think we’ve got
displacement.”

Glaring
back at Taverner’s soft calm, Sorus thumbed off the intercom and began to run
commands on her board.

Before
she could activate internal spin, Marc Vestabule said, “Haste is required,
Captain Chatelaine.” He sounded as inexorable as an iron bar.

Pain
made her feel her years — and the pull of time made her angry. “Haste for what?”
she retorted. “Where are we going? You just told me everybody else is dead.
Gone, blown to scrap.” The thought left a cold place in the pit of her stomach.
Even the Bill was gone. He’d been as untrustworthy as any man she’d ever known,
but he’d met some of her needs and supplied others — sometimes without knowing
it. She couldn’t imagine how she would replace him. Without what he’d given
her, how would she bear her indentured servitude to the Amnion? “If we’re in no
danger, what’s the hurry?”

“Decisions
have been made,” Vestabule replied in a tone like rust. “Action must be taken.
Calm
Horizons
instructs acceleration along an interception course. The proximity
of vessels will facilitate preparation.”

Perhaps
he felt the urgency of events after all: as he relayed
Calm Horizons’
orders, he sounded more inhuman than usual.

Sorus
faced him while apprehension throbbed in her temples and the aftereffects of
g-stress ached in her nerves. Decisions? Action? Maybe as many as ten thousand
people just died here. How much more
action
do you need?

“If you
want me to take this seriously,” she said through her teeth, “you’d better
explain it.”

Vestabule
appeared to consult the alien coding of his genes for a moment before he
answered, “Scan data suggests that
Trumpet
was not destroyed.”

Incuriously
Taverner turned his head to look at his fellow Amnioni.

Hunched
over her readouts, the scan first muttered, “I’m starting to get something. One
ship — yes, that’s
Calm Horizons
. Can’t be sure of anything else yet.”

Sorus
swallowed a curse. She believed Vestabule the instant he spoke: the Amnion didn’t
often make mistakes in matters of factual accuracy. But if
Trumpet
was
still alive somewhere, still out there with Morn and Davies Hyland, Angus
Thermopyle and Nick Succorso, aboard —

Sick
with premonitions, as if she knew what was coming, she drawled sourly, “But you
told me we’re the only ships here. ‘No other surviving vessels,’ you said. So
if
Trumpet
isn’t here and wasn’t destroyed —”

She let
the implication hang.

“As the
wave front struck,” Vestabule said, “
Calm Horizons
detected the
emissions of
Trumpet’s
gap drive.”

“So she’s
gone,” Sorus cut in harshly. “You lost her. All this plotting and manoeuvring,
all this destruction, and you lost her.” She made no effort to contain her
anger. She knew from experience that the Amnion didn’t understand such emotions
— and didn’t fear them. “Billingate and all those ships, destroyed for nothing,
wasted. I thought you didn’t like waste.

“Goddamn
it, didn’t you tell
Calm Horizons
who was aboard that ship? Didn’t you
tell them what Angus Thermopyle is — what he came here to do? Why did they let
Trumpet
get away? Why didn’t they use that damn cannon — cut their losses, solve this
problem once and for all? Don’t you understand how dangerous those people are?”