The Real Story: The Gap Into Conflict

  Somebody was going to pay for it. He would get even with the entire parsec if he had to.

  In the meantime, however, he had to take care of himself. He was confident that the place where the supply ship stopped transmitting was at least half a day away under strong thrust: ships crossing the gap were required to reenter normal space that far from any station, to minimize the chance of an accident. And his scanners would warn him as soon as he crossed the supply ship’s particle trail. So he had time for some food and a little rest. If he weren’t at his best, he might not be able to beat Captain’s Fancy.

  He was relying on surprise. Nick Succorso couldn’t know his data-stream had been tapped. And he couldn’t know Bright Beauty had been able to get away from Com-Mine Station.

  He couldn’t know Angus Thermopyle had no interest at all in the supply ship.

  Without gap capability, Bright Beauty lacked Captain’s Fancy’s ability to leave Com-Mine and the belt for some other star system or station, someplace where she wasn’t known. For that reason, Angus couldn’t risk an attack on the supply ship. If he found her, he would be forced to rescue her crew and salvage her cargo in the legally prescribed manner. DelSec lived on those supplies as much as the rest of Station did. If he pirated them—and DelSec was given any reason of any kind to believe he’d done it—he would be murdered the next time he set foot in Mallorys.

  No, Angus was after Nick himself. What he wanted was to catch Nick gutting the lost ship. If he could do that, all his options were good—as long as he destroyed Captain’s Fancy. He could rescue the crew (if Nick had left any of them alive); keep as much of the cargo as he wanted for himself (“lost in combat”); salvage the rest; go back to Com-Mine like a hero.

  His instincts assured him this was the wrong thing to do.

  He ignored them.

  First he stopped Bright Beauty’s spin and went to get himself a quick meal. Then he returned to his g-seat and began testing all his sensors and sifters and sniffers to make sure they were in proper tune.

  Whenever he chewed on his upper lip, he tasted blood again.

  CHAPTER

  14

  Three hours sooner than Angus was expecting, the alarm linked to his tracking gear chimed.

  He grunted in surprise. It was too soon. The supply ship should never have crossed back into normal space this close to the Station.

  And that wasn’t all. Ignoring g, he hauled Bright Beauty around and dropped spin to improve his scan. The particle trace didn’t look right. Big haulers like supply ships had throatier engines: they left a wider track across the dark, more garbage at the fringes and more complete dispersion in the core. Studying his displays and readouts made him so suspicious that he felt like throwing up.

  And yet—

  The sheer coincidence of another ship having passed directly across the supply ship’s transmission vector was staggering.

  And if this was the supply ship’s trace, he was much closer to her than he’d anticipated. She was closer to Com-Mine; therefore her distress call had taken less time to reach Station; therefore she’d had less time to blunder away from this spot; therefore he could catch up with her more easily.

  And by rights Nick’s departure from Station should have taken him well past this point. It was virtually impossible to cut a blink crossing this short. Which meant he was already out where the ship should be. If the ship was there, Angus might not be able to catch him in time. But if the ship was here—

  If the ship was here, Angus could get to her first. Nick would have to come back looking for her.

  The perfect situation for an ambush.

  Angus’ dilemma was terrifying. If he guessed wrong, he would lose his only chance to take Captain’s Fancy by surprise. Then he would have to live with the consequences of his earlier attack on Nick. And Nick had Security on his side. He had a newer ship. He had an entire crew to back him up. Angus might be forced to hide out in the belt for years.

  His sweat made him stink like a swine. Nevertheless he knew exactly what to do. Focusing scan back along the trace, he went looking for the characteristic burst of radiation and dimensional emission which accompanied every crossing from the gap into normal space.

  Before long, he found it.

  There: the supply ship had entered normal space right there. She was too much of everything—too soon, too close, too easily crippled; her trace was too narrow. But she was there, where he could get to her hours ahead of his enemy.

  Giving Bright Beauty as much boost as he could stomach, he reversed course and followed the trace.

  When he plotted the ship’s speed from the density of the particle trail, he saw she was decelerating slowly. That made sense. Unable to navigate, she would naturally want to reduce her own momentum so she would be easier to catch and board. Instead of pushing ahead, however, he began to cut his own speed correspondingly. He didn’t want the supply ship to know he’d found her. She might try to beacon him—and that might betray his position. He intended to sneak up on her, hovering just outside normal scan range and playing dead so he wouldn’t show up on Captain’s Fancy’s instruments. He even went so far as to ride straight down the center of the supply ship’s trace, confusing it with Bright Beauty’s to hide himself.

  He would wait until Nick came. He would wait until Captain’s Fancy cut the supply ship’s heart out, eliminated embarrassing witnesses, arranged easy access to the cargo. He would wait until Nick docked with the supply ship’s carcass.

  Then he would rip Nick Succorso and everything that bastard loved down to raw electrons and space dust.

  He intended to release Morn Hyland so she could watch. He would let her see the blast and try to guess which piece of incinerated debris represented the man she wanted instead of him.

  After that—if she was lucky—he would strip off her shipsuit and make her do things that sickened her. He would teach her who owned her until she was in no danger of ever forgetting it.

  If she wasn’t lucky, he might do a little surgery on her, rearrange parts of her body somewhat, just for fun.

  First, however, he had to find the supply ship.

  He didn’t understand it: she kept slowing and slowing—and yet she remained out of scan-range, invisible somewhere ahead of him. At her present rate of deceleration, he should be almost on top of her by now. Yet he couldn’t locate her.

  That was impossible. He knew for a fact that his equipment was capable of tracking down one lost EVA suit in a hundred thousand cubic kilometers of black emptiness. The supply ship couldn’t hide from him, even if she had a reason to try, which of course she didn’t because she was dead unless somebody came to her rescue, she had to be here somewhere, had to be—

  When he found the explanation, it stunned him for a few seconds.

  That much delay nearly killed him.

  Ahead of Bright Beauty, a sudden powerful roar along the trace showed that the ship he was following had cut in full thrust, enough sheer power to pull away from him at an acceleration of several g.

  Which was why he hadn’t caught up with her. She’d been piling up speed while he’d been slowing down.

  But that was crazy. No crippled supply ship would do something like that. A crippled supply ship with runaway thrusters would jettison her engines rather than let herself race out of reach of help.

  Therefore the ship he followed wasn’t a crippled supply ship.

  He’d been tricked. There was no supply ship. The distress call was a ruse. He’d set out intending to spring an ambush; but the ambush had been sprung on him, he was already caught—

  Stunned, he stared at his readouts and displays, and for a moment he didn’t move. The extent to which he’d been duped paralyzed him. What chance did he have against people who could do this? He’d been so thoroughly outmaneuvered that he was as good as dead.

  Gaping dismay, he looked over at Morn.

  She hadn’t moved, of course. The zone implant blocked the neural impulses which connected her mind to he
r body. She was conscious, but helpless. Like his ship. Unless he could find a way to save them, they would both be destroyed.

  A howl rose in his throat; but he had no time for it.

  Bright Beauty had been running without spin. And all his attention had been focused on the particle trace. He hauled her into a turn, bringing sensors and sniffers to bear on her blind spot.

  At once, her klaxons went off, wailing like the damned.

  A ship came at him fast. No, worse than that: the ship had already fired, throwing a flight of torpedoes in his direction at terrible speed.

  His terror was absolute: it made him superhuman. Bright Beauty was still turning, still starting into spin. He gathered boost and unleashed it at an angle, kicked her to the side so hard that she tumbled away as if she were totally out of control, wheeling like a derelict.

  Every alarm she had on her seemed to go off simultaneously. She wasn’t made for stress like that. Damaged as she was, she was in danger of breaking apart.

  But the torpedoes missed.

  Under so much g, he should have gone completely blank; crushed unconscious in his seat. It should have been impossible for him to retain any sense of orientation, of the spatial relationship between himself and his attacker.

  Nevertheless, while Bright Beauty tumbled, he opened fire.

  The spray of his matter cannon went miraculously close to the other ship. She was forced to veer off.

  He had no way of identifying his attacker, but she was almost certainly the ship he’d been following—almost certainly Captain’s Fancy. Somehow, Nick Succorso had been able to cut his blink crossing short enough to intersect the transmission vector of the bogus distress call. Or he’d blinked far enough past that point to return with another crossing. He’d lured Angus to follow him. Then, when he’d slowed Angus nearly to a standstill, he’d accelerated and looped back to attack.

  None of that mattered, of course. It didn’t matter who Angus’ enemy was—not now. The only thing that mattered was that he was trapped and had to fight for his life.

  For his life and Bright Beauty’s. And Morn’s.

  His ship’s tumble was dangerous. It was also much too slow. Under this kind of g, he couldn’t read his screens. Still he knew somehow what the other ship was doing, where she was in relation to him.

  As his attacker came around and brought her guns to bear, he hit braking thrust, straightened out Bright Beauty’s fall, got her tubes behind her, and gave her as much drive as he thought he could stand without losing his mind to the dark.

  Matter fire licked her sides, but didn’t do any real damage. Then she pulled out of range, surprising her attacker with the fact that she was still under control and could perform maneuvers which should have been impossible.

  Angus’ head was jammed brutally against his g-seat; but now at least he could look at his displays and screens, his console. Targ plotted the other ship automatically, showing her on a grid even a crazy could have understood.

  She was gaining on him. At this rate, she would be in position to open fire in a matter of seconds.

  Angus ought to be taking evasive action.

  But he already knew Captain’s Fancy was fast. If he really wanted to outrun her, he would have to give Bright Beauty all the power his drive could generate. Then he would black out. He wouldn’t know whether he was alive or dead until his ship reached the end of her fuel and stopped accelerating.

  He didn’t pile on any more boost.

  He also didn’t take any evasive action. To do that, he would have to slow down; or else the inertial stress might be enough to make him hemorrhage.

  Instead he started seeding the space behind him with static-mines.

  He didn’t know it, but his mouth and chin were covered with blood. Every time he bit his upper lip, it bled more.

  Static-mines were tiny: a scan officer with his mind on other things might miss them. Angus released them in clusters of ten or twelve, but they scattered so quickly that they shouldn’t create a combined blip for the attacking ship to read.

  If she fired at him and hit one—

  Or if she simply ran into it—

  She fired. His displays showed him the characteristic energy-burst of matter cannon. Bright Beauty was struck—another scar along her flank. Yet she was lucky: the hurt was no worse than a slap.

  The salvo also caught a few of the static-mines.

  He’d keyed them to set each other off. In seconds, his trail was covered by disruptive explosions, a barrage of particle noise, doppler signals, and radio garbage loud enough to randomize every scanner Captain’s Fancy had.

  In effect, Bright Beauty—and space itself—disappeared. The attacking ship was left deaf and blind.

  She would stay that way for ten or fifteen seconds, until her computers were able to filter the chaos, distinguish between noise and fact.

  At that instant, Angus wrenched Bright Beauty to the side, away from her former course. He gave her one quick slam of extra boost.

  Then he shut her down.

  Everything. Even life-support. Thrust; communication; lights; sensors: everything except minimal computer function and passive scan systems which didn’t give out signs of life; everything except the faint, almost undetectable nuclear hum of charged matter cannon.

  He was trying to make himself invisible.

  Trying to compensate for the fact that he was outgunned and outmanned and probably outpowered.

  Sweat drenched his shipsuit, but he didn’t notice that. He forgot to course; he almost refused to breathe because in his imagination he could taste his air already starting to go bad. His whole body was focused on the dull screens of his passive scan—sifters which sent out nothing, but only accepted and interpreted what came to them across the void. Where was his attacker? By rights, his sense of space told him, she should be there. But his equipment said nothing. He was as blind as Captain’s Fancy. The only difference, the only hope, was that Captain’s Fancy was the one in pursuit, that—

  The only difference was that she was still moving under power.

  His screens flickered. There.

  Moving cautiously now, hunting, groping—but still using her engines, life-support, internal communications; still sending a shout of data through the residual noise left by the static-mines.

  Because she didn’t know where he was, she was about to come under his guns.

  Come on, you bastards.

  He didn’t so much as whisper aloud: he was irrationally afraid his attacker might hear him.

  Come on, you sons of whores. Let me have just one good shot at you. Just one.

  His ship made no sound, gave away nothing except the small hum of her guns. Surely the only way Nick could spot her was by picking out her silhouette against the starfield? And surely they were far enough away from each other to make that difficult, nearly impossible? Surely it would take time for the computers to run that kind of analysis on what they saw?

  Time: all Angus needed was time. His attacker was already within range. If he fired now, he wouldn’t miss. But he might not kill her. If he waited until she came closer, he would have a chance to catch her with a torpedo.

  Just one torpedo would be enough to break her back. He was sure of that. He knew what his torpedos could do.

  He waited.

  Come on, you shithead motherfucking cocksuckers.

  Waited.

  Too late, his equipment registered the sudden blast of power as the other ship fed boost to her thrusters.

  She’d spotted him. Just when he was about to gut her, tear her entirely to pieces, she’d spotted him. Or she’d guessed what he was doing.

  With all her strength, she accelerated out of his way.

  Raging, he jabbed at his guns, sent cannon fire like hate at her, hot and savage, frantic for destruction. One entire barrage got her, skimming open the metal skin of her side, spilling atmosphere and debris into the vacuum. But that wasn’t enough to kill her.

  He knew it wasn’t eno
ugh because she kept returning his fire until she pulled out of range.

  And she hit him.

  He didn’t have time to assess the damage: he had to get moving, had to get Bright Beauty under thrust before his attacker could turn. Fiercely, he brought her back to life, ignited her engines.

  He knew his ship. She was his, and he’d taken care of her intimately for years. When his thrusters roared alive, he knew instantly that one of them had been hurt. It stuttered and choked, sending a terrible shudder through the hull.

  That last hit had holed one of his thruster tubes.

  The side-blast would make Bright Beauty almost impossible to control.

  He tried: brutally, desperately, he tried. Ignoring the strain on his body, his heart, the strain on Morn, the strain on every suture of Bright Beauty’s skin and every weld of her frame, he fought for speed and control, wrestled with the side-blast for his life.

  It was no good. He couldn’t do it. It would have taken all his skill just to run her in a straight line at a limp. While his attacker turned and scanned him and studied the situation and then started back toward him to finish him off, he accomplished nothing except a wild cartwheel into the dark, an off-center spin that made Bright Beauty completely unmanageable. Now if he tried for speed the only thing he would do was rip his own mind away so that he would be unconscious when he died.

  He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how to fail and die, but that was his only alternative. While Bright Beauty reeled out of control like this, he couldn’t so much as fire his guns. They were useless. And he knew his enemy was closing on him, knew it without a glance at scan—which was hopelessly confused in any case. By the time he succeeded at pulling his ship out of her spin, Nick Succorso would be ready to blast him to dust.

  Only because Bright Beauty’s motion was so painful, he struggled with it. He shut down the engine with the damaged tube, then used braking against the spin. But when her screens cleared, he saw that he’d done nothing except make life easier for his enemy.

  The other ship was in position: poised; primed.