The Gap Into Power: A Dark and Hungry God Arises

  With difficulty, he wormed his hands up to wipe the sweat off his face. He had no guarantee that this other ship wasn’t Amnion. Nevertheless he believed she was human. If the shipyard on Thanatos Minor hadn’t been controlled by human beings, Succorso wouldn’t have tried to escape here from Enablement Station.

  So the ship was human. And illegal. He couldn’t stop thinking like a cop, the cop Morn Hyland had been. Whoever rescued him was his enemy, one way or another. The shipyard on Thanatos Minor served forbidden space as surely as if it were Amnion. The illegals who proxied for them here were the most malign men and women in the galaxy; as bad as Angus Thermopyle; worse than Succorso in some ways.

  And he had no way of knowing what they wanted from him; what his value to them was; what use they meant to make of him.

  Though the prospect twisted his soul, he had to brace himself for more helplessness, brutality, deprivation.

  As soon as its sensors detected a breathable atmosphere, the ejection pod automatically popped the locks and unsealed its hatch.

  At once a hand gripped the hatch and swung it wide.

  Davies found himself staring down the muzzle of an impact gun.

  “Out,” demanded an oddly lifeless voice.

  With his mind full of Morn, Davies feared that he would start to wail. For some reason he didn’t. Instead he snarled a curse, pushed the muzzle out of his face, and sat up.

  Right the first time: he was in a hold. A cargo hold, not a medical rescue bay designed to receive ejection pods, judging by the look of it; by the fact that the pod was anchored with the kind of flexsteel straps freighters used to secure crates and equipment; and by the lack of heat.

  The man with the gun sure as hell didn’t look like a medtech. His slack features and dead eyes gave him the appearance of a nerve juice junkie who was about to follow his addiction to its logical conclusion. His shipsuit was too nondescript to mean anything. But he must have been a guard. His impact gun wasn’t a weapon he carried: it was a part of him, a prosthesis replacing his right forearm. Instead of a left foot, he had a metal tripod anchored to his calf. If he really were a nerve juice addict, with most of his muscles gone flaccid and stupid, he probably needed that support to help him stand the kick of his gun. And the gun had to be part of his arm or else he wouldn’t be able to aim it.

  Slowly he brought the muzzle back to Davies’ face and repeated, “Out.”

  “Don’t fucking rush me,” Davies growled like his father.

  But he didn’t hesitate to climb out of the ejection pod.

  The cold gripped him immediately. Hours of sweat turned to ice on his skin. He was already shivering as he looked around to see if the guard was alone; to see if he had anything to gain by kicking the guard in the stomach and ripping his gun off.

  The guard wasn’t alone. A man and a woman stood fifteen or twenty meters away, watching him. They were bundled in coldsuits that muffled their shapes; but their hands and boots looked normal, and their faces were human.

  The man’s head was so long and thin that it seemed like a caricature of itself. Because he was unusually tall, he gave the impression that inside his coldsuit his whole body was thin. A nearly lipless mouth smiled over crooked teeth. Beneath a thatch of dirty hair, his eyes glittered as if he’d artificially reinforced his concentration with enkephalins.

  That glitter and his smile made him look like a madman.

  The woman appeared stable by comparison. Despite its lines, her face was still handsome; gray highlights did nothing to cheapen the richness of her hair. Davies would have said she was a beautifully mature woman whose best years weren’t far behind her. Only a slight stiffness in the way she carried herself suggested that she may have been older than she looked.

  The man’s smile widened as he studied Davies. For a moment no one said anything. Then he breathed in a gust of vapor, “Now here’s a surprise.” His voice was wrong for his body: it should have belonged to a kid with rosy cheeks and excessive enthusiasm. “Another surprise.”

  “What do you mean?” the woman asked in a vibrant contralto.

  “What?” The man glanced at her with what may have been amusement. “Don’t you recognize him?”

  “No.” The woman frowned. “Well, yes. But that’s impossible. He’s far too young.”

  “Interesting, isn’t it?” The man returned his bright gaze to Davies.

  Involuntarily Davies wrapped his arms around his chest, trying to contain some of the warmth which steamed from his bones. If he could climb back into the ejection pod and close the hatch, its systems would protect him from freezing. But the guard would stop him if he tried that. Unable to control his shivers—and unable to keep his mouth shut—he remarked raggedly, “I guess you know my father.” Then, because he was desperate, he added, “So I guess you know he won’t take it kindly if you let me freeze to death.”

  The guard kept his gun aimed at Davies’ head and reacted to nothing. Apparently his addiction inured him to cold—or to the awareness of cold.

  “Let me explain something,” the man said, incongruously youthful and eager. “You’re worthless to me. Other people think you’re valuable, and I’m going to know why before I make up my mind about you, but to me you’re just a waste of atmosphere. Threats won’t help you. And your father as sure as shit won’t help you.” The man chuckled. “If he even knows you’re alive. So don’t give me a hard time. Answer my questions like a good boy and take your chances.

  “How did you do that?”

  Davies understood all of this and none of it. Angus Thermopyle was in Com-Mine Security lockup. He knew nothing about his son—and probably wouldn’t care if he did. And Davies himself meant nothing to Thanatos Minor. His value was to the Amnion and Morn, with Succorso caught between them, fighting to make them both serve his own purposes.

  His teeth chattered as he asked, “Do what?”

  The man seemed to enjoy the sound of Davies’ teeth. “Change course in that pod,” he said liplessly.

  “I didn’t.” Davies shivered so hard that his right knee failed. This was only a cargo hold. Nothing except the bulkheads and the infrastructure and the ship’s frail skin held out the black and absolute cold of space. For an instant he caught himself with his left. Then that, too, folded, and he thudded to the deck. His mouth could hardly form words. “It’s impossible.”

  “I told you so,” the woman commented distantly.

  “Then it’s a game,” the man assented. “Captain Nick must be playing bait-and-switch with our hosts. If he thinks he can get me tangled up in something like that, he’s even more confused than I remember.

  “What’s your name?”

  The heat leaked out of Davies, taking his life with it. He should have wailed or pleaded. He should have answered the question. But he didn’t. He said, shivered, “Fuck you.”

  At that, anger or enthusiasm stretched the man’s lips even thinner. They were pale around his words as he said, “Listen to me. I’m the Bill. You pay me before you get anything. Hypothermia is a nice death. As soon as you go to sleep, nothing ever bothers you again. You can be sure I won’t let you freeze. I’m not that nice to anybody. You can answer questions now, or you can wait until I try a little BR surgery on you.

  “What’s your name?”

  Despite the cold, Davies had no trouble reaching back among his memories Morn’s memories to the Academy, where she’d first heard the term “BR surgery.” BR meant “bio-retributive.”

  “Davies,” he replied in a cough of steam. “Davies Hyland.”

  The man paused. “Now why, I wonder,” he mused, “does that name sound familiar?”

  “You heard the story,” the woman told him. “Captain Davies Hyland, commanding officer, United Mining Companies Police destroyer Starmaster. It destructed somehow—or Thermopyle blew it up. He got away with the captain’s daughter. Morn Hyland. She left him for Succorso when Com-Mine Security arrested him.

  “You know Thermopyle. You know what he must have
done to her while he had her. On top of everything else, he must have gotten her pregnant.

  “This must be her son.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” the man protested. “He’s at least sixteen years too old.”

  The hold contracted around Davies. The cold seemed to leech vision as well as heat out of him. The ague in his muscles was so severe that he couldn’t keep his head up. On his knees he huddled over himself like a penitent.

  The woman sighed patiently. “Where did he just come from?”

  “Captain Nick’s ship.”

  “And where before that?”

  The man let out a sigh of comprehension. After another pause he asked, “Davies, why did you go to Enablement Station? What were you doing there? What was Captain Nick doing?”

  Now who was being betrayed? By whom?

  Davies could feel the sleep he’d been promised coming. The chills threatened to shake his consciousness apart. Soon he wouldn’t be able to connect one thought to another, and he would be able to rest at last.

  What answer would Morn want him to give?

  He had no way of knowing, but he did the best he could.

  “She’s UMCP. Morn Hyland.” I’m UMCP, you fucking bastard, and this is one bill I’m definitely going to pay. “They sent her.” He could barely force out more than one word at a time. “I don’t know why. But Succorso—” The cold seared his lungs. For a moment he coughed hard enough to bring up blood. Then he finished. “He’s working with her.”

  There. At least one small part of his debt of harm to Nick Succorso was paid.

  But it didn’t work. Not the way he wanted. Out of the cold and the gathering dark, the man said, “I don’t believe you. Enablement is the only place she could have obtained a kid your age. That means you must have been the reason they went there. There must be something”—Davies heard relish in the word—“special about you. Otherwise our hosts wouldn’t want you back.

  “I’m quite sure you know what that something is. Eventually you’re going to tell me. You’re going to tell me what kind of game they’re playing.”

  Davies couldn’t see the deck in front of him.

  What kind of game.

  He no longer knew whether his eyes were open.

  They’re playing.

  Maybe, he thought as he sagged dumbly onto his face, maybe it worked after all.

  NICK

  ick Succorso rubbed the scars on his face as if they were tight with old pain and waited for Billingate Operations to assign him a berth.

  Where he was told to dock would hint at where he stood with the Bill.

  He knew perfectly well that he was pushing the Bill into a difficult position. The Amnion warships—Tranquil Hegemony and now Calm Horizons, looming out of deep space—had certainly been in communication with Thanatos Minor, transmitting their requirements. Also certainly, those requirements weren’t to Nick’s benefit. And the Bill had to take them seriously. He lived here on sufferance: his hosts could revoke his whole economic existence whenever they wished. In addition, two Amnion warships represented enough firepower to root him out of his rock like a rat out of a hole.

  And then there was the question of selling human beings to forbidden space. The Bill had no moral, or even visceral, qualms about such things: that was sure. Nevertheless he was equally sure to have pragmatic qualms. If Thanatos Minor became known as a place where men and women were lost to the Amnion, Billingate would lose traffic. Fewer ships would come; fewer repairs would be done; fewer goods would be sold.

  He wouldn’t thank Nick Succorso for bringing problems like that down on his head.

  On the other hand, Nick had credit for the repairs he needed; and providing such repairs brought in much of Billingate’s wealth. And the ships which came for repair were the same vessels which brought the resources and information the Amnion craved. Any ship the Bill turned away would have a double impact on his profits.

  Also the circumstances surrounding the sale of Morn and her damnable brat were unique. In this situation, the Bill might believe that he could cooperate with Nick—perhaps secretly, perhaps passively—without risking too much damage.

  He wouldn’t thank Nick for coming to him now, like this. But he might conceivably do the work Nick needed from him.

  The first indication of his leanings would come when Operations assigned a berth. A visitor’s dock or a place in the shipyard? If the Bill treated Captain’s Fancy like a visitor, Nick’s troubles were just beginning.

  As if Morn hadn’t already done him enough harm—

  He still had no idea how she’d escaped from her cabin to reprogram that ejection pod. The maintenance computer reported that the lock on her door worked fine. His crew volunteered nothing. Someone had betrayed him, but he didn’t know who—or why.

  “Damn them all to hell and shit,” he muttered. “What the fuck’s taking so long?”

  Mikka Vasaczk and her watch had the bridge while Captain’s Fancy coasted toward the rock. Sib Mackern sat at the data station because he and Alba Parmute were sharing the work of three people; but Scorz was a competent replacement for Lind on communications, Ransum could manage helm despite her jittery hands, and Karster was safe enough at targ. The scan second, Arkenhill, was no substitute for Carmel—who was?—and this close to Thanatos Minor, as well as to two Amnion warships, scan was critical; but Mikka was watching everything that came in through Arkenhill’s board almost as carefully as Nick himself did.

  In any case, Captain’s Fancy was moving too slowly to survive a fight. She might inflict damage, but she would be destroyed nonetheless.

  While his ship glided along her approach trajectory toward Billingate, Nick paced the bridge and studied the screens and fretted as if he had worms gnawing inside him. The electricity, the combative frisson, which usually filled his nerves like eagerness when death and ruin threatened him, was gone. The knowledge that he could beat anybody had been replaced by the fear that Morn had dug a hole too deep for him to climb out of.

  There was no question about it: he should have ripped out her female organs when he first heard she was pregnant, instead of taking her to Enablement to have her brat.

  He shouldn’t be stewing about that now, of course. The past was the past: men who looked back got shot by what was in front of them. Until now, the only regret of his life was that he’d ever trusted anyone enough to let that woman scar him. Unfortunately his acid longing to take back the mistakes he’d made with Morn refused to recognize its own futility. Instead it gnawed inside him like cramps, hindering his strength, restricting his energies.

  She was so beautiful—Sex with her was the closest he’d ever come to healing his scars. And every bit of it was a lie. Like the first time, with the woman who’d cut him. The welcoming spread of Morn’s legs had been a steel trap, open to shear off his manhood, his ability to beat impossible odds; gaping to amputate the part of him that never lost.

  What she’d done to him made his heart hurt as if she’d laid her knife there instead of on his cheeks.

  What the fuck’s taking them so long?

  “It’s not a simple question for them,” Mikka answered unnecessarily. “They have to figure out whose side they’re on. Probably they’ve never had to do that before.”

  For the first time since he’d known his second, her habitual scowl didn’t look merely closed, defended. Instead it conveyed criticism; even hostility. It gave the impression that she no longer trusted him—him, Nick Succorso, who had once been as unquestionable to her as the orbits of the stars.

  Morn had cost him that as well.

  “This may come as a surprise to you,” he snarled from the burning depths of his regret, “but I knew that already.”

  Mikka shrugged stolidly.

  “Whatever they’re talking about,” Scorz reported in an abstract tone, “they’re beaming it too tight for us to hear. There’s some residual buzz, but I can’t pick up anything else.”

  Struggling to put Mikka and Morn a
nd regret out of his mind, Nick muttered as if he didn’t know he was repeating himself, “Damn them all to hell and shit.”

  Operations continued to transmit routine traffic information, trajectory confirmation, station protocols; nothing else.

  He paced the bridge and tried to think.

  At some point he would have to resume his air of superiority and confidence; fake it if he couldn’t actually feel it. His dread and regret were infectious: the more uncertain he felt, the more his people would doubt him. Mikka wasn’t the only one—although she was the worst, because she was the most capable; because he’d trusted her the most. Sib Mackern seemed to flinch whenever Nick caught his eye. And Ransum’s nervousness was spreading. Normally confined to her hands, it now affected the way she turned her head; it made her shuffle her feet as if she felt an unconscious desire to run.

  Already three people on the bridge distrusted Nick enough to be unreliable.

  Who else felt that way? Maybe no one except Vector Shaheed. And Vector’s attitude was predictable: he had reason to think Nick was going to kill him. Hell, the phlegmatic shit deserved to be killed. He’d ignored an order. Maybe the infection hadn’t spread any farther yet.

  But it was going to spread. It would certainly catch Pup. The kid was Mikka’s brother. And he admired Vector.

  And the rest of the crew would be exposed to the same illness as soon as they felt Nick’s vulnerability and realized that the center of their lives might not hold much longer.

  Groping for clues—for ways to pull himself out of his stew—maybe for hope—Nick stopped at the scan station and asked harshly, “Where did they take that damn pod?”

  “Cargo berth,” Arkenhill answered promptly without lifting his gaze from his board. He may have been trying to prove that he was as capable as Carmel. “I guess they’re planning to keep the pod. The ship docked a couple of minutes ago. You want to know which berth?”

  “No.” Nick had only one reason for caring what happened to Davies Hyland. “I want id on the ship.”

  “That’s easy. We’ve got traffic data.” As a precaution against accidents, Operations transmitted information on all ships and movements in Billingate’s control space. Arkenhill hit keys, consulted his readouts. “She calls herself Soar. Captain Sorus Chatelaine. Port of registry, Terminus.”