The Gap Into Madness: Chaos and Order

  Out of the confusion, Cray barked, “Captain, I’m picking up a transmission!”

  Oh, shit.

  Dolph cocked his head. “VI? I hope it’s good news. I could use some.”

  “No, Captain,” Cray gulped as she studied her readouts. “Down there.”

  He opened his mouth lugubriously. “What, from the swarm?”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  He made a show of swallowing his astonishment. “Well, don’t keep me in suspense. Who’s sending it?”

  Cray gaped at her board for a couple of seconds, then wheeled her station to face his.

  “Captain, it’s from Vector Shaheed.” Her voice was hoarse from overuse. “Aboard Trumpet.”

  Dolph steepled his fingers, pursed his mouth. “Maybe,” he mused, “that’s how our friend out there knows where she is. We’d better look into this.

  “What does Dr. Shaheed have to say for himself?”

  Cray bent to her readouts again. “He isn’t talking to the Amnioni,” she reported. “Or he says he isn’t. He claims this is a general broadcast. For anyone who can hear him.

  “Captain”—she struggled to clear her throat—“he says he’s developed a mutagen immunity drug. He says he’s been working on it ever since Intertech shut down their research. Now he’s succeeded. Then—” Cray’s voice failed momentarily. “Then he gives a formula.”

  A formula! Christ! Min knew how the communications officer felt. She had difficulty containing her own amazement.

  A mutagen immunity drug, the drug, the one Hashi had developed from Vector Shaheed’s research. The one Hashi had supplied to Nick Succorso so that Succorso could play Hashi’s games with the Amnion.

  Trumpet was broadcasting the formula!

  Cray hadn’t paused. As soon as she mastered herself, she explained, “That’s just the first part of the message. But all the rest is test designs. To help whoever hears him prove his formula is effective.”

  Min should have been filled with dismay. Hadn’t Warden agreed to suppress Intertech’s research for a reason? Hadn’t he told her that his survival as the UMCP director depended on his complicity with Holt Fasner? General broadcast! Surely this was a disaster?

  But what she felt wasn’t dismay: it was an acute, visceral sense of pride. God, this was wonderful! A mutagen immunity formula on general broadcast. If Vector Shaheed had thought of this and carried it out all on his own—

  No, she didn’t believe that. Trumpet was too small: with Angus to help him, Nick Succorso could too easily control everyone around him.

  There was only one person aboard who might have persuaded Nick or Angus to permit this; only one who’d been trained in the same ethics and responsibility Min herself served—

  “After that it all repeats,” Cray finished. “Continuous broadcast. I guess Trumpet is planning to beam it out as long as she can.”

  A grin stretched Captain Ubikwe’s fleshy mouth. He may actually have been amused.

  “Well, we can count on one thing, anyway,” he remarked. “Our friend as sure as shit doesn’t want to hear that.

  “My congratulations, Director Donner,” he drawled over his shoulder. “When you told me Trumpet was headed for a bootleg lab so Dr. Shaheed could do this, I thought you were guessing. Remind me to be more respectful.”

  Min ignored him; hardly heard him. Her head churned with inferences and concern.

  God, had Warden planned for this, too? Or were Trumpet and all her people completely out of control?

  Morn Hyland was aboard. Warden had planned for that. But did he know what she’d become? Did he know what months of zone implant addiction, months of Thermopyle’s and Succorso’s brutality, had made of her?

  Did he know that in spite of everything she was still a cop?

  How well did even Hashi Lebwohl understand Nick Succorso? Or his own creation, Angus Thermopyle?

  The minute anyone around Massif-5 picked up Trumpet’s message, the Amnioni was effectively beaten; checkmated. Even that vessel couldn’t go to war with the whole system.

  But she could still kill Trumpet.

  And no one aboard the gap scout deserved to die; not scant minutes after they’d achieved this incredible victory.

  “Captain Ubikwe.” Min’s voice was husky with emotion, but she didn’t care. “We aren’t fast enough. We need more speed.”

  He glanced back at her. Humor and darkness glinted in his eyes. “Maybe if you and I get out and push, Director Donner,” he commented sardonically, “we can save a couple of minutes.”

  Before she could retort, however, he turned away. Speaking to the rest of the bridge, he went on more sternly, “I don’t think a little extra speed is going to help us. Even if we were at our best, we wouldn’t be able to get where we need to go fast enough. But Director Donner is right. Trumpet has earned anything we can do for her.

  “That Amnioni knows something we don’t. Otherwise we would still be dodging proton beams. It’s time to get ready.

  “Engage laser tracking,” he told Glessen on targ. “Program torpedoes. And see if you can find a way to pack more charge into the matter cannon. Brace yourself to fire everything on my order. If we want to cover Trumpet and survive the experience, we’d better be serious about it.

  “Try to triangulate, Cray,” he continued. “Calculate reflection vectors or something. And give Porson anything you get. It would be particularly useful if we could locate that gap scout.

  “As for you, Sergei—” Dolph chewed his lower lip for a moment, thinking hard. Then he said, “When I give targ the order, I want you to stop evasive action. That’ll make Glessen’s job easier. And if we want our friend to concentrate on us, we might as well give her the best target we can.”

  His people obeyed as if he hadn’t just commanded suicide.

  He was doing as much as he could: Min knew that. She approved, despite the risk. And yet her whole body burned like her hands to go faster; fast enough to fend off Trumpet’s doom.

  Morn Hyland was a cop; a UMCPED ensign. In the performance of her duties, she’d given humankind a staggering gift: an effective defense against the Amnion.

  Min Donner couldn’t bear the thought of letting her be killed.

  “Help me out, Porson,” Dolph rumbled. “Where is Trumpet! I’ll take guesswork if you don’t have real data.”

  “Something—” Porson muttered over his readouts. “Just hints—”

  A moment later, however, he said more strongly, “I don’t know, Captain. That looks like two ships.”

  Blips in tentative colors appeared on the scan schematic which showed the relative positions of Punisher, the Amnioni, and the seething margin of the swarm.

  “Two?” Captain Ubikwe demanded.

  The scan officer nodded. “But I can’t be sure. Unless I’m seeing ghosts, they’re keeping themselves occluded.

  “One of them must be Trumpet. The emission match is pretty close. I just can’t tell which one she is.”

  Dolph flung a look at Min, but she shook her head. If one was Trumpet, the other might be the ship which had followed her out of forbidden space. Or the vessel might be Hashi Lebwohl’s mercenary. She had no way of knowing.

  Her nausea increased. She needed work, activity; something to occupy her mind so that she could forget the distress in her gut. That other ship was a threat. Whoever she was, she would attack Trumpet as soon as she got the chance.

  “Are they together?” Captain Ubikwe asked Porson.

  “From our point of view, Captain, they might as well be. But they’re still in the fringes. Using the stones for cover. Stationary, it looks like. Down there that much distance is considerable. There may be enough rock in the way to keep them from scanning each other.”

  Then the scan officer flinched as he saw new data scrolling down his readouts. “Captain, that other ship—She could be the one we saw coming in from forbidden space. Before we left the Com-Mine belt. Her signature is close, but it doesn’t quite match. Could be damage. If she?
??s half-crippled, she might look like that.”

  Not Free Lunch.

  Another Amnioni? An illegal working for the Amnion?

  God, how had either of them found Trumpet!

  Dolph’s tone took on an edge. “Be ready, Glessen,” he warned. “Our friend is going to fire. When we see which target she picks, we’ll know which of those two ships is Trumpet”

  “I’ve already got her, Captain!” Cray put in excitedly. She assigned a label to one of the blips on the scan display. It indicated that Trumpet was the nearer of the two ships—nearer by an insignificant thirty or forty k. “That broadcast can’t be coming from the other ship,” she explained. “The reflection vectors are wrong.”

  “Good.” He grinned his approval. “Porson,” he went on at once, “I can’t tell by that schematic. Is Trumpet occluded from our friend?”

  “Looks like it, Captain,” Porson answered.

  “Good again. Now—”

  Before he could finish, emission numbers along one of the screens flared in new directions. At the same instant the scan display showed a detonation among the rocks of the swarm; a concussion as vehement as a bomb. Hard radiation and brisance globed outward like the effects of a thermonuclear explosion.

  The blast wiped Trumpet’s blip off the screen as if the gap scout had ceased to exist.

  Afire with alarm, Min strained against her belts; fought Punisher’s wrenching stagger so that she could see the numbers clearly, understand what they meant.

  “Proton cannon!” Porson cried. “The defensive fired! Direct hit! Trumpet is—”

  Gone. Smashed. No mere gap scout could survive a direct hit by a super-light proton cannon.

  But an instant later the scan officer yelled, “No! She’s there, I see her! The defensive hit rock!”

  Then he called urgently, “Captain, that was Trumpet’s cover! She’s wide open!”

  “Now, Glessen!” Dolph ordered; loud and sharp as breaking granite. “Everything!”

  Immediately the targ officer leaned his palms onto his board as if he were pushing all his keys at once.

  At the same time the cruiser’s stumbling rush stabilized as Patrice simplified her maneuvers; pulled her onto a direct heading toward her goal.

  Lasers wailed into the dark in coherent streams. Punisher lurched as flights of torpedoes blasted from their cradles. The hull-burn of the matter cannon sharpened like screaming as Glessen fed every possible joule of charge to the guns. With every force and weapon she possessed, Punisher hammered at the Amnioni, striving at the outer limit of her strength to attack the big defensive so hard that the alien would have no choice except to deal with her, try to beat her, before firing on Trumpet again.

  It couldn’t work. Punisher was too far away; lacked the sheer might she needed to coerce reactions from the Amnioni. The defensive had already shown her capacity to withstand continuous matter cannon fire. Lasers could be deflected by glazed surfaces, stymied by shields—or ripped completely apart by the chaotic energies unleashed when matter cannon bursts struck particle sinks. And torpedoes were too slow; limited by thrust to space-normal speeds.

  The best Punisher could do wouldn’t stop the Amnioni.

  And Trumpet had no more cover. She didn’t have time to run. Even at full burn, she couldn’t acquire enough velocity to go into tach. Her image on scan shone hot with emissions as her drive roared, hurling her into motion on a line past Punisher toward open space; blazing desperately for speed. But she was too late; inevitably too slow: the alien’s targ would track her with ease.

  As soon as the defensive recharged her proton gun—

  Then, without warning, new numbers blazed on the screens: new force vectors streaked the vacuum.

  “Jesus!” Porson shouted. “The other ship! The one from forbidden space. She’s firing!

  “She’s firing at the defensive!”

  Impossible, it was all impossible, the other ship was an enemy. Yet Min saw the truth on the screens faster than Porson could say it aloud. From out of the swarm the unidentified vessel delivered a massive barrage at the Amnioni.

  If the alien warship had cross-linked her sinks in order to handle Punisher’s attack, this new onslaught would catch her unprotected; virtually defenseless—

  “More, Glessen!” Dolph roared like a thruster tube through the din. “Don’t let up!”

  Punisher’s unremitting assault on one side; the stranger’s blast on the other—

  “She’s hit!” Porson called. “She’s hurt! The defensive is hurt! We’re overloading her sinks! We’re starting to get through!”

  One hundred eighteen seconds to recharge the proton cannon. Min saw a countdown on the displays; held her breath. Could Punisher and the other ship damage the Amnioni fast enough to prevent another blast?

  No. The time was nearly gone.

  Perched on a torch of thrust, the gap scout scrambled out of the swarm, accelerating at a killing rate. But her escape window would close in eight seconds.

  “Do it, you bastard!” Captain Ubikwe raged at the defensive.

  Five.

  “Save yourself!”

  Two. One.

  The alien’s super-light proton cannon spoke again.

  A coruscating flare of emissions bloomed on Punisher’s scan as Trumpet’s unexpected ally broke open and fell into oblivion. In milliseconds her hulls cracked wide, spuming atmosphere to feed the static of the swarm; her drive imploded, its energies driven in on themselves; released power crackled across the rocks. Bodies and hopes too small to be discerned at this range were flash-burned to powder. A heartbeat later all that remained of her was the residue of destruction.

  The Amnioni had saved herself. That made sense. She was hurt; lurching with pain. If she’d fired at the gap scout instead—a moving target rather than a stationary one—she might have missed. Then she might not have lived long enough to know whether Trumpet was dead.

  And the gap scout’s broadcast would reach VI.

  But now the small ship had another hundred-eighteen-second window.

  It sufficed. Min knew that before Bydell’s calculations confirmed it. At this rate of acceleration, Trumpet could survive. She would have enough velocity to engage her gap drive effectively in another eighty seconds. And her automatic helm controls were more than adequate to carry her safely out of the Massif-5 system, even if all her people were unconscious.

  “Well, that’s a relief,” Captain Ubikwe murmured almost softly. “I must admit, I was starting to worry.”

  Yet he didn’t delay. The Amnioni’s proton cannon might be turned on Punisher next—especially now that the cruiser was in a better position to cover Trumpet.

  “Sergei,” he instructed promptly, “I think this might be a good time to resume evasive action. Just because our friend is hurt doesn’t mean she can’t hit us.”

  No. With an effort, Min straightened herself in her g-seat. No. The defensive had known where Trumpet would emerge from the swarm. She might know where Trumpet was headed now. And she might have other allies—allies she didn’t expect. Hashi’s mercenary, Free Lunch, remained unaccounted for. That ship might be somewhere in the vicinity, waiting for her chance to strike.

  Punisher still had work to do.

  “I think, Captain Ubikwe,” Min countered, “this might be a good time to get the hell out of here.”

  He wheeled his station to face her. He may have been about to protest, Get out of here? And leave an Amnion warship running loose in human space? But she didn’t give him time to speak.

  “Trumpet needs us,” she pronounced, summoning her full authority. “What you call ‘our friend’ could decide to go in pursuit. She’ll have to do it from a standing start, but she might try it anyway.

  “And we haven’t seen Free Lunch yet. If she’s watching all this, she knows Trumpet’s alive. She can still try to fulfill her contract.

  “This is our chance to get ahead of them both.”

  Their chance to make sure humankind didn’t
lose what the gap scout’s people had to give.

  Fortunately Dolph understood her. He didn’t require a time-consuming explanation.

  “All right.” He nodded decisively. “We’ll let VPs gunboats have that defensive. If she sticks around long enough for them to find her.

  “Bring us about, Sergei,” he ordered. “Let’s see if we can catch Trumpet before she produces any more surprises.”

  Patrice didn’t hesitate. “Aye, Captain.”

  Roughly he threw Punisher into a turn so hard that Min’s vision went gray at the edges, and her heart seemed to falter against her ribs. Nevertheless she kept watching the screens until she saw Trumpet’s blip wink out in a characteristic burst of gap emission. The gap scout had gone into tach.

  Ten minutes of brutal g and matter cannon fire passed before Cray announced that Trumpet had left a Class-1 UMCP homing signal trace behind her.

  This is the end of Chaos and Order.

  The story concludes in

  The Gap Into Ruin This Day All Gods Die.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  STEPHEN R. DONALDSON made his writing debut in 1977 with the first Thomas Covenant books; the series quickly became an international bestseller and earned him worldwide critical acclaim. Stephen Donaldson was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and currently lives in New Mexico.

  This edition contains the complete text

  of the original hardcover edition.

  NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.

  CHAOS AND ORDER

  A Bantam Spectra Book

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Bantam hardcover edition published July 1994

  Bantam paperback edition/July 1995

  SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1994 by Stephen R. Donaldson.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 94-5850

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.