Sorus controlled a retort. Life is trouble. Nobody gets out alive. If you don’t cover your own ass, don’t expect me to do it for you. Instead she drawled, “Sure, Chief. Leaving that sonofabitch alive was the worst mistake of my life.” Her mouth twisted on the lie, but she kept her tone casual. “I don’t want to make any more.”
Succorso hadn’t mentioned her? What the hell did that mean?
Retledge said, “Good.” Her intercom clicked as he silenced his pickup.
She felt too tired to move. Lowering her head, she closed her eyes and fell into fatigue as if she were plunging down the gravity well of her buried despair. But Taverner didn’t take his gaze off her: she knew that without looking to confirm it. His attention leaned on her, making demands she couldn’t refuse.
What game was Succorso playing now?
She didn’t know. After half a minute she pulled the ragged pieces of herself together and sent out her team.
Forty-five minutes later she met their return in the airlock which connected Soar to the Lab.
Milos Taverner stood beside her. She would have preferred to leave him behind, but she hadn’t wanted to argue with him. However, she’d insisted that he wear eyeshades to conceal his alien-ness.
The four members of the team weren’t necessarily her best people, but they were well suited for this assignment. One of them, her targ second, was so large and loud that his friends said of him that he couldn’t sneeze without setting off proximity alarms on nearby ships. Another, Soar’s cabin boy, was simply the most beautiful youth she’d ever seen—a flagrant invitation to pederasty enhanced by his own rapacious appetites. The third, one of the engineers, was a woman with a weird talent for appearing demure while nearly falling out of her shipsuit.
Sorus had chosen them because they were good distractions. Without much effort they could hold every eye around them almost indefinitely.
The fourth member of the team was her command third. She’d put him in charge because he was quick, decisive, and knew how to make total strangers do what he told them.
As ordered, her people had brought a boy with them. He might have been fourteen or sixteen years old, but the white fear on his face made him look younger.
Grinning harshly, the command third saluted Sorus. “Captain.” Then he pointed at the boy. “According to Trumpet’s manifest, his name is Ciro Vasaczk, but Succorso calls him Pup.”
He was exactly what Sorus needed.
Pup was stocky, a bit too wide in the hips. A plain shipsuit a size too large for him rumpled at his wrists and ankles, but at least it was clean. The pallor of his skin seemed to emphasize the whites of his eyes; his mouth hung slightly open. Nevertheless he didn’t struggle or shake. His gaze attached itself to Sorus as if he knew immediately that his life was in her hands; hers and no one else’s. If she didn’t take pity on him, no one would.
Just a kid, she thought, gripped by a self-disgust she couldn’t afford. Perfect.
“Pup?” she said quietly. “I prefer Ciro.”
One of his eyebrows twitched. He looked too frightened to speak. But then he surprised her by saying through his fear, “Captain Succorso won’t like this.”
She studied him gravely. “Of course he won’t. That’s the point.
“Any problems?” she asked her command third.
The man shook his head. “We found him in what Beckmann calls the refectory. He was sitting at one of the tables, trying to fill out a req. You think he’s scared now, but he wasn’t any calmer when we located him. I guess Succorso told him to order supplies, but didn’t bother to let him know what they needed.” He glanced to the other members of the team. “Security never saw us with him. They had other things on their minds. As far as they know, he wandered off while they weren’t looking.”
Sorus nodded. “Good.” Retledge’s men would begin hunting as soon as they noticed the boy’s absence, but the nature of the search would be conditioned by the idea that Ciro had gone somewhere on his own—perhaps simply exploring, perhaps acting on Succorso’s orders.
She intended to put him back where he could be found before Security had time to become urgent.
Saluting, she dismissed her team. They filed out of the airlock behind her, leaving her alone with Ciro and Taverner.
Taverner hadn’t spoken. He might have been blind behind his eyeshades—blind and deaf, unaware of anyone else’s presence.
She considered suggesting that he do her dirty work for her. But she didn’t want that, in spite of her self-disgust. Her responsibility for her own actions was all that kept her sane—and human.
“Ciro,” she asked distantly, as if she were lost in thought, “do you know who I am?”
The boy didn’t react. He stared white panic at her, betrayed nothing else.
“Do you know who this is?” She indicated Taverner with her head.
Ciro didn’t so much as flick his eyes in Taverner’s direction.
She let a little weariness creep into her tone. “Why do you think I had you brought here?”
A moment passed before he decided to answer. “I thought you wanted crew. Ships like this do that. I’ve seen Nick do it, when he was desperate. Steal crew—” Slowly the muscles at the corner of his jaw tightened, thrusting out his chin. “I’m not really a cabin boy. I’ve been trained for engineering.
“But that’s not it.” Just for an instant his voice rose as if it were about to break. Then he controlled it. “You aren’t interested in me. You said so. You want to use me against Nick.” He swallowed hard. “Or Trumpet.”
Sorus sighed to herself. So Ciro could still think, despite his alarm. And he had engineering experience. That was good, from her point of view. But it would make what was about to happen that much worse for him.
“That’s right,” she answered. “In fact, you’re essentially irrelevant—I mean you personally. I could have used anyone. You just happened to be available.
“Pay attention to me now,” she told him as if she thought he might be capable of attending to anything else. “Your life depends on it. I want you to understand this situation. I want you to understand that I’m serious.”
He gave a quick nod like a jerk. His eyes never left her face.
Taverner stood without moving. Just once she would have liked to see him appear restless or uncomfortable. The fact that the Amnioni didn’t fidget made her feel jittery by comparison.
Harsh with vexation, she began, “I’m Captain Chatelaine. This ship is Soar—we were at Thanatos Minor when Captain’s Fancy went down. I’m the woman who cut your Captain Succorso.
“I serve the Amnion.”
Involuntarily Ciro’s jaw sagged.
“I don’t mean I work for them.” Sorus didn’t mind letting her anger and revulsion show. She wanted to scare the boy—scare him right to the edge of paralysis. “I serve them, Ciro. I’m going to tell you why.
“Years ago,” in a different life, when Sorus had turned illegal because that was the path she chose, “this ship had another name. But she wasn’t gap-capable then, and eventually the cops caught up with us. They couldn’t take us—she’s too powerful—but they did us real damage. Enough to finish us. It was just a matter of time, we were crippled. Limping to our grave.” She remembered it all too well. “The next time the cops found us, they were going to tear us apart.
“But the Amnion found us first. We were doing business with them anyway, and we missed a contact. They came looking for us.”
Ciro stared back at her dumbly; close to terror.
“They weren’t nice about it,” she rasped. “When they saw how bad we were hurt, they didn’t offer to help us. Not them. Instead they handed me an ultimatum. Meet their terms or die. They were going to let us sputter away until we starved or crumpled, unless I gave them what they wanted.”
Can you guess what’s coming, boy? Do you know how much trouble you’re in?
“What they wanted was to use me in an experiment. They’d developed a new—I guess you
could call it a drug—and they wanted to know if it worked on humans. If it worked, they told me, I would still be human when it was done. I could have my ship back, they would save us, give us a gap drive, anything we needed.”
Sorus paused to let some of the pain of the memory pass, then said, “If the experiment didn’t work, I would turn into one of them.”
She shrugged to loosen the tension in her shoulders.
“I figured I knew what would happen if I said no. They wouldn’t risk a fight—they didn’t want damage. So they would leave us alone until we were too far gone to defend ourselves. Then they would board us and do their damn experiments anyway. One way or another, we were all lost. The Amnion would get what they wanted, and I would get nothing.
“So I let them have me to experiment on.”
If Ciro had showed any reaction, she might have started to yell at him. She needed an outlet for the gnawing pain of her despair. But for some reason his focused, unresponsive fear daunted her, like Taverner’s immunity to restlessness.
“It worked,” she told the boy bitterly. “I’m still human.”
Again she shrugged. “But they hadn’t bothered to tell me what kind of drug it was. I didn’t find out until afterward.
“It’s not an antimutagen, it’s more subtle than that. It doesn’t stop their mutagens. It postpones them. Like a temporary antidote. The mutagen stays in you, it stays alive, it works its way into every cell and wraps itself around your DNA strings, but it doesn’t change you as long as you have this other drug in your system. How long the delay lasts depends on how much of this other drug you have in you—or how often you get it. You can stay human until you’re cut off from your supply. After that”—she snapped her fingers—“you’re an Amnioni.”
She shifted her feet, adjusted her balance against the asteroid’s light g.
“That’s why I serve them, Ciro. If I don’t, they’ll stop giving me the antidote.
“And that’s why you’re going to serve me.”
Sliding her left hand into a pocket of her shipsuit, she brought out a loaded hypo.
For a kid, the boy was quick. His face stretched and then crumpled as if he were panicking; he flinched backward a step. But his retreat was a feint. Too fast for real panic, he launched a flying kick at the hypo.
Fortunately Sorus was ready for him. She shifted to the side, pulled her left hand out of the way, blocked him past her with her right forearm.
The force of his kick glanced toward Milos Taverner.
Without effort, Taverner caught the boy’s boot, spun him in midair, and wrapped both arms around him from behind.
Ciro struggled fiercely, wildly; making no sound. But he might as well have been trying to break free of an armcuff. The Amnioni had more than enough strength to hold him.
Now Sorus didn’t hesitate. If she did, the darkness of her own actions might well up and drown her. Swift and relentless, she slapped a grip onto Ciro’s wrist, stretched his forearm out from its sleeve to expose a patch of bare skin, and jabbed her hypo into him.
In two seconds the hypo was empty.
Nick Succorso’s-so-called cabin boy had approximately ten minutes of humanity left.
She stepped back quickly, in case he tried another kick. But she saw at once that he was done fighting. He hung rigid in Taverner’s grasp; gaped at the tiny red stigmata which the hypo had left on his skin. Then he drew back his head and opened his mouth for a scream of absolute horror.
With a long sweep of her arm, Sorus struck him across the cheek. The blow did nothing to ease her revulsion, but it stopped Ciro’s cry.
“I told you to pay attention!” she barked. “Look at me.”
As his head recoiled, he’d dropped his eyes to his forearm again; the mark of the hypo seemed to pull his gaze down. When she demanded it, however, he slowly brought up his face.
His expression made her feel like shooting him.
Trembling somewhere deep inside, she put the hypo away and took out a small vial.
“Think for a minute, Ciro. If I turned you into an Amnioni, you wouldn’t be able to help me. Succorso would never let you back aboard.
“You’re right. You have a mutagen in you. But it’s slow. Are you listening? It’s slow. It won’t start to work for ten more minutes.
“This”—she held the vial up in front of his face—“is the antidote. The drug that keeps the mutagen passive.”
His eyes seemed to claw at the vial as if he wanted to swallow it, plastic and all.
“There are six capsules here,” she went on. “Each one lasts for an hour. I can give you six hours of your life back right now. And there’s more where this came from. Plenty more. Enough to keep us both human as long as we live.
“But I want you to think.”
Abruptly Ciro thrashed against Taverner, threw himself into a fury of resistance. But the effort was useless: no doubt Taverner could have held Sorus as easily as he gripped the boy. After twenty seconds Ciro slumped, dangling in Taverner’s arms.
“You want to know why we’re here.” Now he didn’t look at Sorus or the vial; his head hung as if his neck were broken. “You want me to tell you.” His voice struggled like a groan out of his constricted chest.
“Wrong.” His dread touched fury in her. “I already fucking know why you’re here. I know all about Shaheed’s research. So try again.”
He flinched. “Then you want me to do something for you. Something to Nick. Or the ship.”
“Think,” Sorus insisted.
“You can’t want me to try to kill any of them,” he breathed. She couldn’t see his face; she could barely hear him. “I’m just a kid. I wouldn’t stand a chance.
“You want me to do something to the ship.”
“Go on.”
“I don’t know how to work the command boards,” he protested. “I don’t have the priority-codes. And anyway I’m never alone on the bridge.”
She nodded slowly. “That’s probably true. You’ll have to think of something else.”
He held his breath for a moment, then let it out in a burst like a muffled sob. “You want me to sabotage the drives.”
“Both of them,” she pronounced so that he couldn’t misunderstand her. “You’ve been trained in engineering. You know how to do it.
“That’s all. You make sure Trumpet can’t outrun me. I’ll handle the rest. She’s finished if she can’t run. I’ll beat her, grapple on, cut my way in if I have to, take what I want. Then you can come with me. I’ll keep you supplied for the rest of your life.”
“Give me the pills,” Ciro begged in a whisper.
“Not yet,” she countered, tightening her fist on the vial. “There’s one more thing I want you to understand.
“When I let you go, you could tell Succorso what I’ve done. As you say, you’re just a kid. You might decide to be a hero. Or maybe you’ll think I’ve been lying to you.
“But you can’t hurt me. Try to understand that. I’m going to leave dock as soon as you’re off the ship. Without more of this drug, you’ll turn Amnion. Your friends will have to kill you. And I won’t be any worse off than I am now. I can still tackle your ship in the swarm, before she can run.
“Is that clear, Ciro?”
She thought that he would nod: he appeared beaten enough to agree to anything. But she was wrong.
Still without raising his head—still hanging as if his neck had snapped—he objected, “What if it takes longer than six hours? I’ve never seen those drives. I’ve never even seen how they’re accessed. What if I need more time?”
Now his head came up, lifted by the pressure of his racing heart. “Or what if Nick isn’t done? What if I’m stuck here and you’re out there when I run out of time?”
This time his voice cracked like a cry.
She met his flaring gaze and held it. Despite her years of service to the Amnion and her many visits to Billingate, she’d never before done what she was doing to him. Nevertheless she’d witnessed enou
gh brutality, experienced enough, to foresee his argument—and prepare for it.
“All right,” she sighed as if she were relenting. From another pocket she withdrew a second vial. “Six more hours.” She wanted him scared, even terrified—not overwhelmed. “But that’s as far as I go. If I don’t have what I want in twelve hours, you’re on your own.”
He was a kid: twelve hours might seem like a long time.
His features twisted on the verge of tears; but she waited until she heard him breathe like a whimper, “All right.” Then she told Taverner to let him go.
The instant Ciro was released, he snatched the vials from her and fought one of them open, fumbling to get a capsule into his mouth before his ten minutes ran out.
Sorus Chatelaine knew exactly how he felt.
A few minutes later her command third took Ciro off the ship. His orders were to deliver the boy to Chief Retledge; explain that Ciro had been found lost or snooping near Soar, and was being delivered to Security in order to avoid trouble with Captain Succorso; then return for an immediate departure.
When the outer lock had closed behind them, Sorus faced Taverner and demanded, “Good enough?”
Taverner’s eyeshades made him seem more human, but they had no more expression than his alien gaze. Instead of answering her question, he asked one of his own.
“Do you believe that this ploy will succeed?” He didn’t stress the word “believe”: their earlier conversation stressed it for him.
She snorted angrily. “Maybe you’ve forgotten what human fear looks like. I haven’t. That boy is afraid. He’ll do what I told him.”
She was sure. Men like Succorso didn’t inspire the kind of loyalty that would lead Ciro to sacrifice himself.
“But that doesn’t mean I think it’ll work,” she went on. “It might—or it might not. If he’s scared enough, he might give himself away. What I ‘believe,’ “she sneered, “is that it’s worth trying.”
Taverner’s pause might have been the Amnion equivalent of a shrug. Then, while they were alone in the airlock, and no one else could hear him, he announced flatly, “This installation must be destroyed.”