“We picked up the miners, no problem, and as much of the selenium as we could hold, and headed back around the suns for Valdor, But we had to swing wide to avoid a particularly violent asteroid swarm, so we ended up closer to the fringes of the system than we liked—we were too far away from the main shipping lanes and the UMCP patrols to be comfortable about it. But we’d done things like that before, when we had to. We didn’t know any reason why this time should be different. Add a month or two to the trip, then we would be back in port.”
Sweat gathered on his forehead. His eyebrows were dark with moisture. He wiped at it with the back of his hand, then clutched his fingers together in front of him.
“Of course, it was different. This time a blip that looked like just part of the swarm turned put to be illegal. Right when we stopped worrying about it, she came after us. They hit us with some kind of gun, I still don’t know what it was, but it peeled us open like a storage container. We couldn’t begin to defend ourselves, our own guns went out at the first hit. Then they grappled on and burned their way aboard.
“They took the selenium. You would expect that, under the circumstances. But they didn’t kill any of us. I mean, not after the fighting was over. We thought we were going to be torched, or maybe just shoved out the airlock, but we weren’t.
“I was hiding between the hulls, in an EVA suit. I’ve never been really brave, but for some reason when we were hit I had the crazy idea I might be able to reach one of the guns and get it working again, so I climbed into a suit and went outside. That’s the only reason I’m still here. Still human—”
For a moment his voice trailed away. His hands seemed to writhe against each other as he forced himself to go on.
“We—my family—all those miners—We weren’t killed. I’d never heard of illegals like that, I didn’t know they existed. They weren’t ordinary pirates, they were traitors, they worked directly for the Amnion.” He seemed unconscious of the sweat trickling into his eyes. “Instead of killing us, they lined us up and started injecting us with mutagens.”
Davies snarled deep in his throat—an involuntary growl of anger and protest. Morn put her hand on his arm to keep him still, but her eyes didn’t leave Sib’s face.
“I had a video link with the bridge,” Sib said as if he were haunted by the memory; hunted by it. “I saw everything. If they were just being killed—my family—the others—I would have gone back inside and tried to fight for them. I might have. I was desperate enough. But I saw them injected. I saw them change. It paralyzed me. I started screaming—I couldn’t help that—but I cut off my pickup first.
“My whole family and all those miners, the ones who weren’t already dead—They were made into Amnion. Eventually they boarded the other ship and left me.”
With an effort, he pulled his fingers apart, separated his hands. But then they seemed to have nowhere to go. Slowly they crept together, clung to each other again.
“I kept on screaming until I lost my voice. I thought as long as I could hear myself I wouldn’t go insane.” He swallowed like a spasm. “For some reason I was afraid I might be turned into an Amnioni just by watching it done to my family. But of course that didn’t happen.
“None of it had to happen.” Blinking at a blur of sweat, he brought his gaze back into focus on Morn. There was no anger in his tone: he lacked her ability to hold a grudge; didn’t have that defense against what had happened to him. “We’d been sending status reports to Valdor ever since we encountered the asteroid swarm. And as soon as we spotted that ship, we started yelling for help.
“We knew someone heard us because we got an answer. From the cops. UMCP cruiser Vehemence, Captain Nathan Alt commanding. She wasn’t all that far away, maybe half a billion k.
“She told us she couldn’t respond. She said she was on an impossible vector, g-stress would kill her if she tried to turn hard enough to reach us in time.”
A clutch of loss lifted his shoulders like a shrug. “She never did reach us. I probably should have died—that would have been simpler—but just when I was starting to run out of air, I was found by an illegal that came to scavenge before the hulk was picked clean by an authorized salvage. That’s how I became illegal myself. The cops didn’t respond. And my whole family was gone. I didn’t have any reason to do anything else.
“When I got the chance a few years later,” he finished softly, “I joined Nick.”
Morn nodded, a blaze in her eyes. For the moment she’d forgotten Angus and corruption; forgotten Nick. Instead she seemed to feel all the anger Sib needed for himself and couldn’t find. The cops didn’t respond. She might have become a pirate herself under those conditions.
How many illegals were like Sib?—like Vector? How many of them had been driven to violence by the inadequacy or malfeasance of the organization she’d tried to serve? How much of the piracy which threatened humankind’s survival against the Amnion had the cops themselves caused?
When was it going to stop?
Then Davies interrupted her inward fuming. “Captain Nathan Alt,” he muttered harshly. “I”—he glanced at her, caught himself—“you’ve heard of him.”
He was right: the recollection came back to her as soon as he mentioned it. And it was important.
“I remember Captain Alt.” Her voice shook until she controlled it. “By the time I went through the Academy, he’d become a legend. He was court-martialed because he didn’t help a ship under attack in the Massif-5 system.
“The story we heard”—it was part of a seemingly endless series of lectures on the duties and responsibilities of being a cop—“is that Min Donner hit him with every charge she could think of. His datacore confirmed he couldn’t have changed course hard enough to reach that ship in time—not without damaging Vehemence and maybe killing some of his own people. But Director Donner said he should have made the attempt anyway. Better yet, he should have anticipated the situation. He’d received that ship’s status reports—he knew she was being pushed toward a part of the system where she might get into trouble.”
Davies nodded once, hard, as if he shared the ED director’s conviction.
“The court believed her,” Morn finished. “He was stripped of his commission and drummed out of Enforcement Division.”
Sib couldn’t meet her gaze: his eyes slid off as if they’d lost their grip. Some necessary part of him had screamed itself away into the void while his relatives were injected with mutagens. And yet somewhere he’d found the courage to help her when she’d needed it most; the courage to risk his life against Nick—
“I’m sorry, Morn,” he murmured toward his twisted hands. “That doesn’t help. What good are cops, if they don’t even try to do their jobs?”
“You’ve got it backward,” Nick drawled from the passage outside the galley. “It’s worse when they do try to do their jobs.”
Sib flinched in surprise, jerked up his head. Together Morn and Davies turned on their stools, pulling against their zero-g belts to look at Nick.
He floated at the edge of the niche which contained the galley, holding himself stationary on a handgrip. Because he was weightless, he could move in complete silence. And Sib had been looking down. As a result, Nick had been able to come up behind Morn and Davies without being noticed.
She panicked as soon as she saw his face.
His eyes burned as if they were lit by madness; as if a magnesium flare of insanity had gone off inside his skull. A grin like a snarl stretched his mouth back from his teeth. His scars were sharp with blood, as distinct and dark as the work of claws.
“You’ve all got it backward.” He sounded lethal and relaxed; master of himself as well as of them. “This is what happens when the cops try to do their jobs.”
She knew him too well: she knew what his expression meant. Without thought, without taking so much as a second to wonder what in hell had gone wrong, she slapped at the cleats on her stool, unclipping her belt so that she could move; so that she could reach the
zone implant control in her pocket.
Even then she wasn’t fast enough. She’d suffered too much damage: her nerves and muscles were slow. Nick pivoted against his handgrip, bringing up his leg in an arc to kick at her head, and she could see that he wasn’t going to miss. His boot came at her as if she were motionless; as if she were waiting for it.
But Davies was quicker. He had his father’s reflexes; he’d been bred to adrenaline and urgency. And he also knew Nick too well; knew him with her memories, her pain. His fear was as swift as hers. Instinctively he flung his g-flask at Nick’s face. With his other arm, he threw a block against Nick’s leg.
Because he was anchored to his stool, he was able to stop the blow.
For the same reason, the impact slammed him onto the edge of the table. Morn thought she heard a snapping sound from his arm or his ribs. Even though Nick was weightless, his kick was charged with mass as well as inertia. And Davies’ mass had nowhere to go.
The g-flask caught Nick’s cheek and bounced away, leaving a round pale mark like a stain on his flushed skin. Momentarily out of control, he rebounded from Davies’ block, tumbling for the far wall of the passage.
The instant her belt came free, Morn flipped forward, using the table to somersault her toward the foodvends; away from Nick.
Sib had frozen for a second. Panic had that effect on him; incomprehension had that effect. And for another second he made the mistake of scrabbling at the cleats to detach his belt.
Then he forgot about getting loose and wrenched his gun out of his pocket. His hand clenched on the firing stud before Nick could recover from Davies’ block.
Before Davies could duck out of the way—
But Nick wasn’t alone. Angus drifted in the passage beside him, his toes barely touching the deck, his face black with murder. Steadying himself on a handgrip, he caught Nick’s recoil easily, steered Nick’s momentum aside as if the movement were effortless.
In the same motion he raised his hand toward Sib.
Almost too quick to be seen, a thin streak of coherent light shot between his fingers. Before Sib could finish squeezing the firing stud, Angus’ laser slagged a hole through the center of the handgun.
Yelping in pain and shock—hurt by the heat rather than the laser itself—Sib flung the useless gun away. Oh, shit!
Laser fire? From his hand?
Morn couldn’t understand what she’d just seen, and didn’t try. Reacting in pure pain, she snagged a grip on the nearest dispenser, cocked her legs against the surface of a foodvend, and launched herself like a projectile at Angus.
For a splinter of time that seemed to sear her brain, even though it was too short to be measured, she stared straight into his eyes.
His whole face was black with blood, as if hundreds of blood vessels had ruptured at once, burst by the internal pressure of his heart. His eyes were as mad as Nick’s; but they were insane with anguish, not glee; not triumph. Rictus stretched his mouth back from his teeth as if he were screaming; yet he made no sound. Nothing could get past the destructive pressure tearing through his chest.
The hand which had burned Sib’s gun swung to meet her.
Again Davies was faster than she was. In that instant he came back off the edge of the table. Still secured to his stool, and hampered by damage, he nevertheless managed to hack his fist against Angus’ arm.
Too fast for Davies to defend himself—too fast for Morn to see how he did it—Angus recoiled into a blow which struck the side of Davies’ head with a crushing sound, like rock being pulverized. Davies slammed onto the edge of the table again.
This time he didn’t get up.
The blow swung Angus out of the way of Morn’s attack.
Out in the passage, Nick had recovered control. Now he seemed to pour at the galley like a breaking wave, ready to hammer down on Morn’s head.
Instead of trying to hit Angus, she caught her fingers in the back of his shipsuit and used his bulk to pull her into another somersault. With every gram of strength and momentum she could focus, she drove her bootheels into Nick’s face.
The impact knocked him nearly cartwheeling down the passage.
At the same time it shoved her hard against Angus’ back.
Fighting for her life, she made a desperate effort to heave herself off him.
Easily, as if she’d used up her capacity to affect him, he caught her wrist in a grip as hard as a C-clamp.
Too late, much too late, Sib cried out, “Morn!” and grappled with the attachments of his belt.
A heartbeat later Mikka arrived.
She must have heard the sounds of trouble outside her cabin and come as fast as she could. Hurling herself along, she delivered a punch at Nick as he plunged past her; but she didn’t pause to follow it. She was already committed to helping Morn.
Her brother floated behind her, directly in Nick’s path. As Nick careened toward him, he raised his stun-prod.
Heavy with muscle, Mikka drove into Angus’ arm.
Morn slipped free as if he’d thrown her away.
Spinning wildly, barely able to keep her head from colliding with the bulkheads, she dashed for the bridge like a feather in a torrent.
Somewhere behind her, she heard a cry that might have been pain; might have come from Ciro. She heard a harsh grunt of effort; heard blows as loud as shots. But she didn’t stop. Driven by fury and terror, she shoved and heaved and rolled forward as fast as she could go. In panic she thought she could feel Angus’ fingers clutching for her, grabbing at her. Thrashing her arms and legs so that she would be hard to catch, she flung herself along the passage until she reached the companionway.
There she could stop her mad tumble on the handrails; steady herself. Still she didn’t pause or look back. From the support of the rails, she pitched into another flip which carried her over the empty bridge stations almost headlong into the bulkhead near the auxiliary engineering console.
Vector looked up in shock. “Morn—?” Surprise seemed to take him by the throat, choking him. He’d been concentrating too hard to hear anything. “What—?”
She locked her fingers into a handgrip, pulled herself off the bulkhead, swung down beside him.
His blue eyes were stunned with fatigue and incomprehension; unable to speak, he stared at her as if she were starting to mutate in front of him.
She had no idea what had gone wrong, but she knew what it meant. Angus and Nick had joined forces. And Angus could do things she’d never suspected—
“Self-destruct!” she cried urgently; blazed at Vector like a gun. “Blow us up! Do it now, while you still can!”
“Morn?” He gaped at her; hardly seemed to recognize her. “Morn?”
“God damn it!” He was too slow. “Let me at that board!”
Frantically she shoved him aside so that she could take his place in front of the console.
Self-destruct. Now or never. She would never get another chance. At any second Angus might shoot her in the back with his impossible laser. Davies was already lost, and she didn’t believe that Mikka and Sib could beat him. There was no other way to stop him.
And yet the bare idea brought up agony from the core of her heart, filled her head with screams she didn’t know how to utter. Self-destruct.
How many times did she have to face the same horror before she finally succeeded at killing herself?
“You can’t!” Angus barked from the head of the companionway. “You can’t access those functions. I’ve locked everything except Vector’s research.”
As soon as he spoke, she knew he was telling the truth. Despite his exertions, he wasn’t out of breath; didn’t seem to be in a hurry. He wasn’t afraid of anything she could do.
“Give it up,” he told her. “Don’t make me hurt you.”
She wanted to howl and weep, beat her fists bloody on the edges of the console. He was telling the truth: she couldn’t stop him this way. Nevertheless she had no time for frustration; couldn’t afford to give vent to her a
gony and despair. She needed them herself.
Still clinging to her handgrip, she turned to face the man who had raped and brutalized and now betrayed her.
Angus hadn’t left the head of the companionway. He seemed to think that he’d already won; that he didn’t need to approach her in order to master her. Yet his face showed no triumph—and certainly no satisfaction. He was sweating so hard that his skin resembled molten wax, and his teeth ground against each other as if he were chewing pain. The congested anguish in his eyes made him look like a man who knew what being raped meant.
“Christ!” Vector breathed softly. “What went wrong? What happened?”
Angus didn’t answer the engineer. His attention was focused exclusively on Morn. He might have been trying to think of a way to plead with her.
There was no pleading in his tone, however. Harshly he said, “Nick gave Ciro so much stun he’s puking his guts out. Mikka and Davies are unconscious. And Sib looks like he’s having some kind of seizure.”
Looming out of the passage, Nick drifted to Angus’ side. With one hand he caught the companionway railing to stop himself; in the other he held up the small stun-prod which Milos Taverner had left aboard Trumpet The spot on his cheek where Davies’d struck him had turned a bright, mortal red, contrasting strangely with the darkness of his scars.
“Not anymore,” he announced, nearly chortling. “He’s puking, too. The air’s full of it back there. When they recover, they’re going to have fun cleaning it all up.”
A sound that might have been a laugh or a snarl burst between his teeth.
“Nobody’s left to help you,” Angus told Morn. “Give up before I have to do something worse.”
Vector shifted his position as if he wanted to protest, then thought better of it.
“No,” Morn panted. Now that she was motionless, she found that she could scarcely breathe. Strain and fear cramped her lungs; she was only able to force out a few words at a time. “I won’t. Put up. With any more of this.
“I would rather be dead.”