“What am I supposed to do?”
Angus toggled controls. “You’ve got helm. Scan data is on the screens. I’ll do the rest.” Simultaneously he brought up targ and communications. “Run us out on a heading for Calm Horizons. No more than one g.
“Evade if anyone fires. Use as much thrust as you need. Otherwise stay on a slow intercept course for that warship.”
The countdown clicked ahead like a timing fuse. Nick rubbed his hands over his eyes, ground the heels of his palms into his scars. A moment later a surge of acceleration tugged Angus against the back of his seat as Nick heated the thruster tubes.
The pressure stabilized near one g. Nick typed a subtle correction. Almost at once the scan plot on the screen showed Trumpet moving in a straight line for Calm Horizons.
Good. Maybe Nick was smart enough to realize that if he didn’t take orders now he wouldn’t live long enough to get a second chance.
Trumpet’s guns were charged, but Angus didn’t intend to use them if he could avoid it: he didn’t want to be caught in a fight here. Instead, despite the drain on thrust, he activated her shields—energy screens to absorb impact fire; particle sinks to protect against matter cannon. Then he keyed his console pickup and began hailing Calm Horizons.
Six minutes. Not nearly enough time for Trumpet to get away safely. Even through vacuum, the shock wave would hit her like a fist. Gap scouts weren’t designed to stand that kind of stress.
On the other hand, it ought to be possible to persuade Calm Horizons to hold fire for only six minutes.
“This is Angus Thermopyle,” he announced into the pickup, “captain, Needle-class gap scout Trumpet, to Amnion defensive Calm Horizons. Don’t fire. I say again, do not fire. My ship has no offensive weapons. I can’t threaten you.
“I have prisoners I wish to trade for safe departure. I’ll hold course and acceleration steady to intercept your position at—” His computer ran a lightning calculation: he named the time it gave him. “I’m prepared to offer Nick Succorso, Morn Hyland, and Davies Hyland in exchange for permission to depart Amnion space. Captain Succorso ordered his vessel, Captain’s Fancy, to destroy Tranquil Hegemony. Morn Hyland is a UMCP ensign. Davies Hyland is her son, force-grown on Enablement Station.
“They mean nothing to me. You can have them if you’ll let me go.”
Firmly he silenced the pickup.
Nick’s hands had frozen on his board, poised for obedience or sabotage. “You sonofabitch,” he murmured.
In case Nick tried something desperate, Angus braced himself to deactivate the second’s station.
But Nick appeared to know that he didn’t have any choices left. “What makes you think you can bluff your way out of this?” he asked thinly. “What kind of scam are you and Milos running?”
Five minutes.
As Trumpet pulled away, her scan field past the planetoid’s horizons improved. Now he counted ten ships out of dock. Some were fleeing. Others converged on his trajectory purposefully, sent by the Bill—or the Amnion. Soar had matched course and velocity with the shuttle to take the craft aboard.
“Me and Milos?” Angus wanted to laugh. “You’re out of your mind.
“Let me guess what happened to you,” he countered. For reasons of its own, his programming didn’t require him to explain himself. “I put Mikka in command. You didn’t want to wait for me, so you tried to take over. But you let a kid with a stun-prod beat you. Another triumph. Nick, you’re a walking success story. No wonder your brains are scrambled.”
Nick’s face twisted, but he didn’t retort.
“I’m going to give you two orders,” Angus went on. “Try not to scramble them, too. The first time I say now, veer off and burn. I don’t care what heading you choose. Just get us away from as many of those ships as you can. They can’t all be coming our way by accident.
“The important thing is maximum thrust. She won’t want to do it—I’m bleeding power for her shields. Push her red if you have to.
“The second time I say now, give me one of your famous blink crossings.”
Four minutes.
“Can you handle that, or should I do it myself?”
“I’m not sure I care,” Nick growled. “It might be fun to see you get out of this on your own.”
Nevertheless Angus’ readouts told him that Nick had begun to plot new courses while he readied the gap drive.
Abruptly the bridge speakers blared to life.
“Trumpet, come about. This is Stonemason. I have orders from the Bill. If you don’t reverse thrust, I’m going to open fire. You have sixty seconds to comply.”
On the display screen ship id appeared beside Stonemason’s blip. She was already in range to attack, and gaining fast.
Almost immediately, however, Trumpet picked up the mechanical sound of an Amnioni transmission.
“Amnion defensive Calm Horizons to human ship Stonemason. You are required to withhold fire. You transgress Amnion space. Therefore Amnion purposes take precedence. The destruction of Trumpet is unacceptable. She carries individuals which are necessary to the Amnion.
“If Captain Angus Thermopyle intends treachery, your assistance in preventing Trumpet’s flight will be rewarded. However, if he deals with the Amnion honestly, he will be permitted to depart. The Bill will be offered”—the metallic voice appeared to hesitate—“other compensation.”
Angus bared his teeth. “It’s like I always say. One good lie is worth a thousand truths.
“Hold course and acceleration steady. Even if the Amnion know I’m lying—even if they want you dead—they can’t pass up a chance to get Morn and Davies back.”
Nick nodded grimly. He’d chosen his new heading. All the gap drive’s status indicators showed green.
Three minutes.
If Stonemason hesitated that long, she wouldn’t live to regret it.
On the other hand, if she fired before then, the Amnion would learn more than Angus wanted them to know about Trumpet’s shields.
“Negative on that, Calm Horizons,” Stonemason returned. “I can’t tell the Bill you want me to hold off. Operations has lost communication. If I don’t follow his orders, he won’t let me back in dock.”
Before Calm Horizons could reply, Trumpet’s antennae picked a new voice out of the crackling dark.
“Calm Horizons, listen to me! This is the Bill! I’m on a cargo shuttle. This is the only radio I can get my hands on.
“Don’t trust Thermopyle! He’s lying. He’s going to try to skip past you somehow.
“Ask him how he got Davies Hyland! Ask him how he got Morn Hyland. He won’t let you have Succorso. He and Succorso are in this together. They snatched the Hyland kid from me. Then the three of them took his mother from you. They’re the ones who broke into your installation, killed your people, destroyed Tranquil Hegemony.
“Don’t listen to him, Calm Horizons! It’s a trick!”
Two minutes.
Before the Bill stopped shouting, the speakers picked up Calm Horizons’ transmission again.
“Calm Horizons to all human ships in the vicinity of Thanatos Minor.” The alien voice held a note of urgency which Angus hadn’t heard before. “You are required to converge on the human ship Trumpet. Trumpet must be captured. Human ships which assist in Trumpet’s capture will be given the greatest rewards the Amnion can offer. Human ships which do not assist in Trumpet’s capture will be presumed hostile and destroyed.
“Message repeats. Calm Horizons to all—”
Nick cut through the broadcast. “This isn’t going to be easy.” Strain shone like a sheen of sweat in his tone. His hands held steady on his board, but his eyes flicked and rolled like a cornered beast’s. “No matter how we veer off, that fucker will have a clear shot at us. Her targ can handle our acceleration, you can count on that. And those other bastards are all moving faster than we are.”
Angus now counted four ships in addition to Stonemason driving hard to form a cordon around Trumpet.
Harshly Nick went on, “We’ll need at least thirty seconds to pick up enough velocity for an effective blink crossing. In thirty seconds every asshole out there will have time to hit us.”
One minute.
Angus mimicked the superior drawl Nick had lost. “Then I guess we need a diversion.
“Get ready. I’m going to cut this fine.”
Heavy g: pressure that would drive Morn into gap-sickness, if Davies didn’t take care of her; enough pressure to squeeze Angus and Nick like sponges in their seats. Nick wasn’t familiar with Trumpet yet: he didn’t realize how hard she could burn. Nevertheless he was right that Calm Horizons’ targ could handle it. And he was almost right about the amount of time Trumpet would need before she could attempt a blink crossing. For the first twenty seconds she might as well be a stationary target.
Unless she rode the shock wave.
If Dios and Lebwohl had miscalculated—
If their understanding of Billingate’s fusion generator wasn’t accurate enough—
Or if Trumpet couldn’t take the stress—
“Calm Horizons to human ship Trumpet,” the speakers reported. “You are required to discontinue thrust. Do so immediately. Commence braking. This will be taken as evidence of good faith. If you do not comply instantly, you will be presumed hostile. For the purposes of the Amnion your destruction will take precedence over the value of your prisoners.”
A wail that Angus couldn’t utter filled his chest—a cry of fear which his zone implants and prewritten instructions refused to permit. He sounded as bleak as a grave as he told Nick, “Now.”
Nick slapped keys with his palms.
A structural roar seemed to deafen the speakers as Trumpet’s thrust leaped to full power. Despite his reinforced strength, Angus slammed back in his seat, then fell sideways as Trumpet cut to her new course.
Away from Calm Horizons.
Between Stonemason and two other ships.
On an oblique heading for the fringes of human space.
Scan detected targ from several sources tracking the ship, swinging guns into line.
Two seconds later a nuclear blast tore the heart out of Thanatos Minor.
A theoretically impossible fusion accident had become possible when Angus, deep in Billingate’s infrastructure, had cut his way through the failsafes and rewired some of the circuits. If the Bill had remained in his strongroom, and Operations had been able to restore internal communications, he might have received warning of what was about to happen; but he wouldn’t have been able to stop it. Not without a complete overhaul of the power station’s control.
When a fusion generator sufficient to run all of Billingate exploded, it produced more than enough destructive force to break open the planetoid.
Impact screamed through Trumpet’s hull as the shock wave struck. Rock like a maelstrom ripped the vacuum in every direction. In seconds, fractions of seconds, the stone storm would catch her, tear her shields apart like vapor, twist her to scrap in the vast dark. Already half the human ships were gone, punched to pieces by Thanatos Minor’s ruin.
Through his ship’s screaming Angus also screamed:
“Now!”
Against the brutal kick of the blast, Nick pitched at his board, slapped keys with his open hands.
Scant meters ahead of the rock, Trumpet went into tach; plunged like Morn into the gap.
WARDEN
n the aftermath of the kaze’s attack on UMCPHQ, Warden Dios was summoned before Holt Fasner.
He’d been able to prevent Godsen Frik from answering such a summons. For that reason he was indirectly responsible for Godsen’s death. But he couldn’t refuse himself. The Dragon was his boss.
If he’d been susceptible to vain regrets, he might have cursed the naïveté or blind idealism—or perhaps the arrogant ambition—which had inspired him to accept Holt Fasner’s offer of service in the first place. He wasn’t that kind of man, however. Instead he shrugged his shoulders ruefully and went on with his job. Time and experience had worked few changes in the nature of his motivations. Such as it was, his naïveté had dissolved; he was no longer blindly idealistic; his ambitions had shed their arrogance. Nevertheless he did what he did now for much the same reasons which had originally led him to accept positions in SMI Security and then the UMCP.
He believed that problems should be solved by the people who became aware of them. Devotion, labor, and care couldn’t be expected from human beings who saw no need for such things. Therefore they had to be supplied by men like himself and women like Min Donner.
At one time he’d privately considered this conviction admirable; hence the suggestion of arrogance in his ambitions. Now, however, he saw it as the means by which Holt Fasner had manipulated him.
Unfortunately he couldn’t give it up. The fact that he hadn’t been wise enough to prevent his beliefs from being used against him was no reason to surrender them. And to a significant extent the problems of the present had been created by his own actions; his own compromises and misjudgments.
Those compromises and misjudgments had proved exceptionally fertile ground for the Dragon. He’d sown many things there.
Warden Dios had no intention of shirking the harvest.
So he took his personal shuttle from UMCPHQ to the “home office” of the United Mining Companies—the orbital platform from which Holt ran his complex enterprises. He disembarked into an escort of what Holt called “Home Security”—more accurately Fasner’s bodyguards. Although Warden knew his way, HS accompanied him to the secure center of the station, where—so the conceit ran—the Dragon lurked in his lair.
When the doors and walls and screens had sealed behind him, rendering the lair and its secrets impregnable to espionage, he came face-to-face with the man who had made him what he was.
Delicate and insidious fears took hold of him whenever he contemplated his boss.
Stay calm, he told himself.
Stay clear.
Remember what you’re doing.
Holt Fasner’s aura was disturbing. Despite his one hundred fifty years, he looked younger than Warden; superficially in better health. Subtle drugs wiped eighty or ninety years off his skin; lifted at least half that many from the tissue of his heart and lungs, the marrow of his bones. Only the advanced ruddiness of his cheeks, the occasional tremor in his hands, the way he blinked as if he had difficulty keeping his eyes in focus, and the hint of mortality in his IR emissions, conveyed the impression that he wasn’t entirely well.
He smiled a cold greeting past the surface of his utilitarian desk. Like the desk, his office was crammed with data terminals, video screens, and communications gear of every description—as ready for information as a living brain—but it wasn’t particularly expansive; or even notably comfortable.
“Well, Ward.” He waved a hand at a chair across the desk from him. “Sit down. Let’s have a chat.”
Schooling himself to conceal his anxiety, Warden took a seat and folded his arms over his heavy chest.
“We’d better do more than chat,” he said as if he could afford to be impatient with the most powerful man in human space. “This is a bad time for me to be away. There’s too much going on.
“You know that, of course,” he added, “so I assume you have something particular in mind. Ordinary channels are secure enough for chats.”
Holt gave a gesture like a shrug; his aura was tinged with tension. “Come on, Ward—humor me. Let’s not rush into this. You can spare a few minutes. How’s the weather over there?” He smiled humorlessly. “Have you found any leads on those kazes? What’s the news from Thanatos Minor?”
Warden sat like a sphinx. “Rush into what?”
Unruffled by directness, Holt countered, “What in heaven made you think it was a good idea to restrict Godsen? I can’t honestly say I liked him, but he did his job well, and he’ll be missed.” The Dragon blinked in small bursts like shivers. “I’m sure by now you must have realized that he would still be alive if you
hadn’t given him those orders.”
“Yes, actually.” If Holt had possessed a prosthesis like Warden’s, he would have seen regret and useless anger swarming like insects under the surface of the UMCP director’s skin. “I did realize that.”
“And … ?” Holt prompted.
Warden steadied himself with the pressure of his arms. “I did it to protect him. That’s what I thought I was doing, at any rate. I asked myself how the kaze who attacked Captain Vertigus could have obtained legitimate id, and I concluded it must have come from a traitor in one of three places—GCES Security, UMCPHQ, or here. With all due respect, I discounted my people.”
“But not mine,” Holt said for him.
Warden nodded. “And not the Council’s—although yours are more likely. Between the two of us, you and I supply GCES Security with virtually everything. And you have a lot more people than they do—or I do. More people means a greater chance that one of them is a traitor.
“Until I located the source of that kaze’s id,” he continued, “I thought I could minimize the danger by restricting Godsen. He was more vulnerable than anyone else, since he has so many reasons to visit Suka Bator.”
And you.
“Of course, I couldn’t have foreseen that you would call him—or that you would suddenly need to see him in person.”
Blinking furiously, Holt asked, “Do you think there’s a connection?”
Stay calm, Warden recited like a litany. Remember what you’re doing.
“I hope you can tell me. In fact, I hope that’s why you sent for me. The timing is certainly curious. Godsen would still be alive if he’d answered your summons. Did you know he was the next target? Did you know who’s responsible?”
That was as close to honesty as he chose to come.
“Of course not,” Holt snapped in irritation. “If I knew ‘who’s responsible,’ you would already have his head on a platter. Weren’t you listening when I said I’m going to miss Godsen?”
Almost immediately, however, he recovered his humorless poise. “But since you mention it, that does bring me to one of the subjects I wanted to chat about. Godsen’s replacement. It’s an important position. In fact, I predict it’s going to be crucial. Have you had time to think about it? I have a good candidate in mind.”