He expected her to activate the black box, but she didn’t. She hugged it to her chest for a minute or two, then lowered her arms and pushed the control into one of her pockets.
“Oh, Davies,” she repeated through her tears, “what did he do to you?”
She was his mind: he understood her perfectly. Fighting the constriction in his throat, he answered thickly, “Nothing. I remembered, that’s all. Seeing him made me remember. It was hard, but he didn’t do it.”
Loyalty required him to say this, despite the crimes Angus had committed against her.
“He rescued me. From the Bill. I still don’t know how.” Angus had said, I can hide us visually, but I can’t block sound. Not without distorting every bugeye in range—How was that possible? “He brought me to the ship. He protected me from Nick. And he made Nick and the others”—Mikka and Ciro, Sib and Vector—“help us rescue you. I don’t know what he thinks he’s doing either. But he hasn’t done anything to me.”
One of her hands clutched at his arm; the other tried to rub tears out of her eyes. “I’m glad,” she murmured as if the words were a cry from so far away that it was barely audible. “I don’t understand, but I’m glad.”
The intercom chimed again. This time Sib spoke.
“Davies, Vector is here. Nick isn’t trying anything, but Vector can hold the gun on him. And Pup still has that stun-prod. If you want, I’ll stay with Morn so you can come to the bridge.”
Davies looked a question at Morn. She nodded; took more of her weight on her legs. When he was sure that she could stand, he went to the intercom and toggled the switch.
“She’s awake. We’re both coming down.”
“Good,” Mikka put in abruptly. “We need to talk.”
Davies silenced the intercom without answering.
“You ready?”
Morn’s bruised gaze hung on his face as she took one unsteady step toward him; another. Fearing she would fall, he put out his arms. But she stayed on her feet until she reached him.
Shaking weakly, her hands rose to touch the sore places on his cheekbones and along his jaw where Nick had hit him.
“I couldn’t,” she said, nearly choking, “couldn’t believe you were safe. They told me you were, but I didn’t dare believe it until I heard your voice—Then you took off your helmet, and I saw you’d been beaten up. I thought Angus did it, but you say he didn’t.”
Obliquely Davies remembered that at one time she hadn’t been able to say Angus’ name. Somewhere in the course of her imprisonment and rescue, her own perceptions of his father had undergone a subtle shift.
“Who was it?”
“Nick,” he answered roughly. Then, because he owed her the truth, he added, “I started it. I had to keep him from leaving the ship. I knew he was cheating, but Angus didn’t. He didn’t know Nick had already sold you to the Amnion.”
Morn bit her lip, gave him another loose nod. “I understand. And you remember what he did to me. You remember it all. That’s why you wanted to lock him out of the ship.
“But there was something else. After you took off your suit, when you headed for the bridge, there was something—” Her gaze dropped, then came back up to his like an appeal. “You looked proud.
“I can’t”—her throat closed convulsively—“can’t remember what that feels like. What were you proud of? What did you do?”
Proud? Davies thought. The moment had been so brief, and what followed after it had been so urgent, that he had difficulty recollecting it. Proud?
Then it came back to him.
“It’s hard to explain. The Bill had me. He talked to me a couple of times, questioned me—he was trying to find out what I knew so he could decide who to sell me to. But I didn’t know anything. Except that I was finished as soon as he made up his mind. So I told him lies, I invented stories—about you and Nick—to make him unsure of himself.”
Davies shrugged uncomfortably. “It worked. I didn’t know the truth, but I made up lies that were so close to it he couldn’t ignore them. And if I hadn’t done that, I would have been out of reach. The Bill would have sold me, and Angus might never have been able to rescue me. Somehow I saved myself.
“When I finally learned the truth—when I saw why my lies worked—it felt good.”
That wasn’t the whole truth, however. He didn’t go on to say, And I’m proud of Angus. When I don’t think about you, about his crimes, about who he is, the things he does make me proud. He’s my father—and he’s superhuman.
That emotion seemed so odd and unjustifiable that Davies couldn’t bring himself to admit it aloud.
Morn blinked as if she were fighting fresh tears. “What lies?”
Those memories were no more painful than any of the others. “The first time,” he answered, “I told him you and Nick were working together. For the cops. I wanted to keep him from handing me back to Nick. And I wanted to make him think I was valuable—give him a reason to hold on to me, instead of turning me over to the Amnion.”
So what you’re saying, the Bill had replied later, is that our Captain Nick had the colossal and imponderable gall to cheat the Amnion on one of their own stations.
Then the woman with him—Davies guessed now that she was Sorus Chatelaine—had said, It’s more than that. He’s saying Succorso had something so valuable to offer them that they were willing to trade force-growing for it. And then he cheated by not giving it to them.
“The second time was more complicated. I had to make him think the stakes were so high that he couldn’t afford to let go of me.”
The Bill had countered by revealing that Nick had just turned Morn over to the Amnion. And Davies had replied with his best lie; his masterstroke.
“I told him you and Nick had a mutagen immunity drug.”
Morn’s eyes widened. “You were guessing!”
Davies nodded mutely.
After a moment a fragile smile eased her appearance. “You’re good at it. I’m proud of you myself.”
He smiled in return. Her approval released him from at least one of his fears.
She closed her eyes briefly; she might have been basking in the simplicity of his reaction. When she looked at him again, her smile was gone. Nevertheless some of the dullness had left her gaze. Her own questions had begun to clarify themselves.
“I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” she murmured. “Let’s go. I want to know where we are.”
Davies also felt ready; readier now than just a few moments ago. He offered her his arm. She accepted it, leaned on him gratefully while he keyed the door.
DAVIES
Together they went out to the companionway and started down to the bridge.
Davies saw at a glance that everyone except Angus was there. Nick lay on the deck below one of the display screens with his head braced on his hand as if he couldn’t be bothered to stand. A red welt swelled along his temple and ear; in a few hours it would match the livid bruise on his forehead.
Two or three meters out of his reach, a C-spanner rested against the bulkhead. Its head was crusted with dried blood.
More blood marked the left side of the command console. There was blood on the deck.
Mikka sat in Angus’ g-seat. Sib had taken the second’s station: he used the board to support his forearms so that he could keep his handgun trained on Nick without tiring. Both Vector Shaheed and Ciro, Mikka’s young brother, were on their feet. The engineer peered at an auxiliary command board which he’d located off to one side of the screens. Apparently Ciro had already accepted his new role as Trumpet’s cabin boy: he was passing around a tray laden with sandwiches, coffee, and hype.
They all turned when they heard Davies and Morn on the companionway. Concern filled Sib’s face, but Vector grinned with sudden pleasure. Mikka’s ingrained glower loosened without releasing its grip on her features. Only Nick kept his attention to himself. Except for the way he chewed the inside of his scars, he looked relaxed and self-absorbed, as if he were alone.
“Morn, you shouldn’t be up,” Sib protested. “You need—”
Mikka cut him off brusquely. “Worry about something else, Sib. She knows what she’s doing.”
With unexpected precision, Davies remembered the exact moment at which Morn had told Mikka about her zone implant. He could taste the specific loneliness which had inspired her to take that risk.
As she and Davies finished their descent, she demurred thinly, “I wouldn’t go that far.” Then she let go of her son’s arm and gestured toward Ciro. “But I know I need food.”
Eager to help, Ciro hurried to offer her his tray.
“Thanks.” She took a hype capsule—affectionately known as “industrial-strength caffeine”—then helped herself to a sandwich and a mug of coffee.
Everyone but Nick watched her while she swallowed the capsule, bit into the sandwich, sipped the coffee; they all waited to hear what she would say, see what she would do.
Between bites, she asked impersonally, “Where’s Angus?”
Mikka answered in a tone as harsh as her glare. “He didn’t say where he was going. He just told us to leave him alone. For a while,’ he said.”
“Sickbay, probably,” Nick supplied for no apparent reason. A grin jerked like a spasm across his teeth and then faded. “He’s got one hell of a dent in his skull.”
“Nick, I don’t understand you,” Mikka retorted with elaborate patience. “Don’t you ever think about what you’re doing?” Behind her patience, exasperation seethed like acid. “He’s the captain of this ship. If he’s like you, he’s got everything locked away with priority-codes we can’t touch.”
“I’ll vouch for that.” Vector pointed at the board he’d been studying. “I’ve been trying to look at his records, just to see what this ship can do, how she does it. But I can’t get access. I can’t even call up engineering diagnostics. Scan and astrogation are available—nothing else. Not even communications.
“Unless he let you in on any of his secrets.” He cocked an eyebrow at Davies.
Davies shook his head. He had no idea what codes Angus might have invoked in the past hour.
“You kill Angus,” Mikka finished, “and we might as well cut our throats. We’ll be helpless.”
“You mean,” Nick sneered back at her, “you don’t already feel like you’ve had your throat cut?”
“Nick—” Mikka began hotly.
“That’s enough, Mikka.” Although Morn’s tone was quiet, it stopped Nick’s former second like a command. She seemed to take over the bridge just by being there, despite her weakness. She was only an ensign, had never commanded a vessel before; yet she might have been Trumpet’s true captain, regardless of who held the priority-codes. “Don’t waste your time on him. He’s just dangerous—he isn’t important anymore.”
Mikka glared at Nick while anger clenched and unclenched on his face. Sib tightened his fist around the gun. But Nick didn’t move; didn’t glance at Morn or Mikka. After a moment Mikka breathed, “Right,” and turned back to Morn.
“Do you want to sit down?” As if in recognition of Morn’s position, Mikka offered her the command station. She sounded perplexed as she added, “You don’t look strong.”
No doubt she’d assumed that Morn was using her zone implant to keep herself on her feet.
“Thanks.” As Mikka stood, Morn moved to the g-seat and lowered herself like a sigh into her place. For a moment she closed her eyes and bowed her head, as if she were waiting for hype or coffee to take effect. Then she emptied her mug and clipped it into a holder on the side of the armrest.
“We’ve got a lot to talk about,” she announced softly. “We should probably do it before Angus comes back.
“If you can access scan and astrogation, I assume you know where we are.”
Mikka glanced at Vector. In response, he hit keys on the auxiliary board, and at once a schematic starchart gleamed to life on one of the screens. More keys: a blip marked Trumpet’s position on the chart.
“Oh, shit.” Davies didn’t need anyone to tell him what the coordinates along the sides of the display meant. Morn’s years in the UMCP Academy were fresh in his mind; he knew what she knew about astrogation. “What are we doing here?”
Trumpet rode a tight elliptical orbit around a red giant in Amnion space. She was roughly three light-years from the frontier of human territory.
Mikka shrugged tightly. “I guess that’s why Angus says we’re safe for a while. Calm Horizons probably won’t think to look for us in this direction. And that’s a loud star—it’s roaring like a smelter all across the spectrum. So it provides a lot of cover.”
“But that’s not the good news,” Vector put in calmly. “The good news is that this orbit gives us acceleration. We can slingshot off the far side fast enough for a gap crossing twice the size of the one we took to get here. If,” he added, “that’s what Angus has in mind.”
“So it makes sense.” Davies was taken aback by the sharpness of his desire to trust Angus. “Coming here makes sense.”
Mikka didn’t hesitate to contradict him. “Only if you assume it makes sense not to head in the opposite direction.” Her stance—the way she cocked her hips and held her arms—was unselfconsciously assertive. “Instead of coming here, we could have crossed three light-years into human space. Maybe this is safe. That would have been safer. Especially if you believe what we’ve heard about Angus working for the cops. In that case, they probably have an entire fleet waiting to protect us.”
“Which means?” Vector asked, not as if he didn’t understand, but rather as if he wanted everything to be explicit.
“Either he isn’t working for the cops,” Mikka finished, “or we haven’t even begun to understand what this is all about.”
Nick snorted contemptuously, but didn’t speak.
“But that’s crazy,” Sib protested. “He must be working for the cops. How else did he get his hands on a ship like this? How else did he manage to arrive just when we needed him?” Forgetting Nick in his anxiety, he turned toward Morn and Davies. “Why did he rescue you? This is Angus Thermopyle we’re talking about. Maybe he didn’t commit the crime we framed him for, but he’s a rapist and a murderer, we all know that. None of it makes sense unless he made a deal so the cops wouldn’t execute him.”
“Sib,” Mikka warned, “pay attention.”
With a gulp of chagrin, Sib swung back to face Nick.
Nick hadn’t moved.
Morn studied the display for a moment longer, then looked away. “That doesn’t matter,” she pronounced finally. “Maybe he made a deal and then decided to break it. Maybe he and—what was his name, Milos Taverner?—really did steal the ship and come here on the run.” She glanced at Mikka, at Vector, at Davies. “Maybe the UMCP is engaged in something corrupt, like taking Intertech’s mutagen research to keep it secret.” Anger echoed in her voice, but it didn’t distract her. “None of that matters.
“We’re here. We have to face the situation as it is. And if we’re going to do that, we’d better figure out what we want. We’d better agree on it. There are too many of us. If we don’t stick together, we’ll all be useless.
“Let’s talk about that. Let Angus take care of himself.”
A sudden silence took the bridge. For a moment there was nothing to hear except muffled breathing and the faint electronic hum of Trumpet’s equipment.
Davies understood Morn’s condition clearly: what looked like assurance in her was really exhaustion and a sense of absolute necessity. Her willingness to take so much on herself amazed him.
He yearned to believe that he could do the same.
Then Nick muttered sardonically, “You think you’re going to be able to make him do what you want? Good luck.”
At once Sib spoke as if he’d been stung. “You decide,” he told Morn. “Leave me out of it. I got what I wanted when we ended up here, instead of dead on Captain’s Fancy, or trapped on Billingate.” Half apologetically, he explained to Mikka, “I
never really belonged with him.” He indicated Nick. “I never liked what we were doing—even before he started selling people to the Amnion. After that I guess all I wanted was for somebody to make me brave enough to go against him. Maybe that’s all I’ve ever wanted.” Addressing Morn again, he concluded, “As long as he’s not in command, I’ll go along with whatever the rest of you decide.”
Mikka snorted in response, but her disdain wasn’t directed at Sib. “You know, it’s funny,” she mused. “For the longest time it never occurred to me to want anything except what he wanted. I never questioned what he did—or why he did it. I even got you into this,” she told Ciro, “because I couldn’t think of an alternative. I couldn’t imagine there were any alternatives. There are worse ways to live”—she glared straight at Morn—“than being illegal.
“But you broke it. Whatever it was I thought I was doing, whatever it was that kept me in my blind little world and didn’t let me think, you broke it. You were better-looking than me, more capable, stronger. And you sure as hell must have fucked better than I did. Once you came aboard, there was no chance Nick was ever going to take me seriously again. And that broke it. I started thinking about the consequences—for Ciro, if not for me. I don’t mind playing games with the cops, but I started thinking about what it means when you play games with the Amnion. Especially when the stakes are so high.
“I guess I’m like Sib. All I want is to not be aboard Captain’s Fancy—not take any more orders from Nick. And maybe give Ciro a chance for something better. I haven’t had time to come up with anything else yet.”
Her brother shifted his feet self-consciously whenever she referred to him; but when she was done, he nodded several times, as if he thought she needed his support. “I want to be an engineer,” he said in a rush so that his embarrassment wouldn’t stop him. “Vector’s teaching me. Maybe Angus can teach me.” He faltered for a second, then went on with a kid’s abashed dignity, “Engineers don’t kill people. They don’t betray their own crew.”