“Just one more thing.” Apparently Holt wasn’t done warning him yet. “I have a message for you.
“I talked to my mother recently. She asked me to tell you that it isn’t enough.”
Warden wasn’t prescient: absolutely not. But Norna Fasner might as well have been. With nothing except video broadcasts and Holt’s contrived hints to go on, she’d grasped what Warden was doing. And she wanted him to succeed—
“Tell her I know that,” he answered brusquely.
Before Holt could reply, Warden silenced his pickup, then ordered his tech to close the communications channel.
Obediently the speakers went dead.
With a shift of his shoulders, he settled against the back of his seat and tried to relax.
Norna was right. Without Trumpet he was finished. Even if Hashi and Chief Mandich found the proof he wanted, Holt wouldn’t fall. He could too easily sacrifice an “overzealous” subordinate and claim innocence for himself. Because he was the boss, he could even take credit for the UMCP’s investigation. The only effective way to challenge him was by attacking the UMCP itself; by turning Warden’s deliberate complicity against the UMC CEO. And the only available arena for that challenge was the upcoming emergency session of the GCES.
So it became Koina’s job. Warden had given her everything she needed—except proof. Now his fate was in her hands.
And in Mom Hyland’s. If she and Davies had received Angus’ priority-codes, they would make Trumpet’s decisions. It isn’t enough.
He couldn’t relax. His fear ate at him too keenly.
From the bottom of his heart he hoped that Min’s loyalty to the UMCP—and to him—wouldn’t inspire her to get in Morn’s way.
“Director—” The tech’s throat was so tight that she nearly choked. Her tone caught him; caught the whole CO Room in a clutch of tension. Instantly alert, he wheeled his seat toward her.
“What is it?”
The woman swallowed convulsively. “Ship coming in, sir. Just resumed tard. Too close. Way too close. She’s braking hard, but she’s practically on top of us.”
Warden flashed a look at the scan displays, saw the ship’s blip perched on a torch of braking thrust. God, she was less than half a million k out. Numbers scrolled rapidly up the screen as computers calculated her deceleration rate. The figures projected that she would be able to stop outside UMCPHQ’s orbit. That was good news—so far. But by the time she matched the station’s velocity she would be within fifty thousand k.
What the hell did she think she was doing?
“Get me id,” he demanded sharply. “Is that Punisher?”
The vector was wrong for Sledgehammer: even if she’d attempted a blink crossing, she would approach on a different trajectory. He didn’t expect Valor to arrive so soon. And Adventurous was still occluded: the scan net showed her on the far side of the planet.
“No, sir,” the tech forced out. “She isn’t broadcasting, no id, nothing,” and she should have, any ship this near stations and traffic was insane if she didn’t broadcast id. “But that isn’t Punisher’s emission signature.”
Warden started to repeat, Get me id! then bit the words back. His people knew their jobs: they were working feverishly. Outside the CO Room, Center had become an electric rush of activity. Traffic officers shouted into their pickups, urgently hailing the stranger for a response; warning other ships and platforms; signaling Sledgehammer and Adventurous, as well as Earth’s cordon of gunboats and pocket cruisers. Collision alarms sounded in case the incoming ship didn’t or couldn’t complete her deceleration. Klaxons called Warden’s people to defense stations. Techs started charging UMCPHQ’s few guns. He didn’t need to shout for id, or anything else.
In any case the fear eating at his stomach had already answered the question.
“Director!” the tech announced abruptly, “she isn’t one of ours. No signature on record.” Therefore she wasn’t a registered human ship. Every ship built legally in human space filed a complete energy profile with UMCPHQ. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be given permission to dock anywhere. The woman swallowed again, then finished, “The computer says she’s a Behemoth-class Amnion defensive.”
An Amnion warship. For a moment Warden’s heart stumbled to a halt. Here.
She must have been the same one Min had engaged to protect Trumpet. Scan made that clear: the vessel’s approach vector was wrong for forbidden space, but right for Massif-5.
This was an act of war with a vengeance. Failing to kill Trumpet had made the Amnioni desperate.
Unfortunately Warden was virtually helpless. UMCPHQ’s cannon were still seconds or minutes away from being charged. Even if they’d been ready to fire, however, they stood little chance against a Behemoth-class defensive’s shields and sinks. And the defensive was already near enough to strike.
If the Amnioni attacked, he had no real way to fight back.
ANGUS
Angus was in turmoil. Machine stresses seethed and yowled inside him like ghouls: his welding haunted him. Events and his own choices—the decisions he’d made because Morn wanted them—had pushed him far out along a limb of logic for which his programming seemed to contain no clear instruction-set.
He wasn’t allowed to return to UMCPHQ and Earth: his datacore was clear on that. Until someone coded his release from this specific restriction, he was supposed to stay away. But he’d blocked his codes. Nothing Isaac was ordered to do reached him. Therefore the restriction remained in force.
He tried to subvert it by leaving Morn in command and Mikka on helm. Hell, he tried to subvert it by leaving the bridge. He wasn’t making the decisions, or putting them into effect. Surely if he didn’t try to break the rules himself, his computer wouldn’t turn against him for letting someone else do so?
To some extent the gambit succeeded. Apparently his commands hadn’t been written to prevent others from taking him to Earth. By luck or stubbornness he’d found his way into an area of ambiguity between imposed limitations; a combination of actions and circumstances which Hashi Lebwohl and Warden Dios hadn’t foreseen. He could still move and talk and plan without being countermanded by his zone implants.
Yet he was going to Earth. And the restriction kept its force. The conflicting impulses of his computer as it ran its inadequate decision-routines filled him with pressure and a strangely impersonal mental anguish, as shrill and weird as banshees wailing over lost souls. Whenever he tried to think, he felt that his skull was about to burst through his scalp.
Other restrictions remained active as well. His threats against Min Donner and Dolph Ubikwe had been pure bluff, empty starshine: he couldn’t hurt UMCP personnel. He’d been allowed to hit the ED director only because Morn was in danger. For reasons of his own, Hashi Lebwohl—or Warden Dios, more likely—intended Angus to defend her. Unfortunately that was the absolute limit of what he could do. Even when he struck, his strength was restrained so that he didn’t strike too hard. If anyone had risked facing him down, they would have learned that his welded impotence still held.
He hated that. It terrified him. He was a convicted illegal on a ship full of cops, on his way to UMCPHQ; and he couldn’t so much as punch anybody unless Morn was threatened.
In addition he had other problems—problems that had nothing to do with his instruction-sets.
Morn wanted to tell her story in public—hers, and Vector’s, and his. If she could, she wanted to tell it to the entire fucking Council. And he was helping her despite a visceral abhorrence so profound that it made him shudder.
But it was all shit: too much crap for one mere cruiser to process. God, the stuff was probably hip-deep on the bridge. He hated philanthropists of every description. The stink of their benevolence sickened him. He knew from experience that the people who did the most harm were the ones who said they were trying to do somebody else good. How did they get their goddamn resources to begin with? By raping and robbing the same people they said they wanted to help. As a baby he’d lain h
elpless in his crib while his mother exercised her madness on him because people who said they wished to do good kept her alive.
Morn didn’t fit the pattern, however. She’d freed him from his priority-codes: she kept saving his life. He did what she asked for reasons as binding as any prewritten commandment. He believed her when she told him what she wanted. And what she wanted—even though it made no sense of any kind—was to hold the cops accountable for their crimes.
If he let himself think about that, he liked it. It was about time somebody held those superior bastards accountable. And her story would make a nice little jolt of revenge for what Hashi Lebwohl and Warden Dios had done to him.
But he couldn’t afford to think about it. He knew it was doomed. He didn’t believe for a second that Min Donner and Dolph Ubikwe and Punisher’s crew and the UMCP and Warden Dios were going to just stand there quietly while Morn shoveled disgrace onto their heads. And if they did, he wasn’t sure he would survive to see it. The tumult in his head might kill him long before then.
Despite his feral grin and confident manner, he felt packed with ruin, like a sun about to go nova. None of his turmoil showed as he followed Captain Dolph Ubikwe off Punisher’s bridge. Nevertheless it ruled him.
Captain Ubikwe had said that he was going to his cabin. To throw up. Angus had accompanied him, intending to keep him hostage. By the time they’d walked five meters past the aperture into the main body of the ship, however, Angus knew he couldn’t do it. His datacore might have allowed it: his fear refused absolutely. If he didn’t find some way out of his imposed distress soon, he would begin to gibber and drool like an idiot.
But he was still Angus Thermopyle: welded and constricted; so crowded with other men’s malice that there was hardly room for his own; but still himself at the core. He’d butchered and raided his way around Com-Mine for years until his fatal flight from the abyss had brought him into contact with Starmaster and Morn. He was at his best when he was terrified.
He followed Punisher’s dark, angry captain twenty meters down the corridor in the cruiser’s centrifugal g. He followed him into a lift upward. But when they left the lift, he stopped.
“All right, fat man,” he announced. “That’s far enough. I’ve changed my mind.”
Dolph Ubikwe turned slowly, his eyes wary. In a deep voice he grumbled, “You’ve got a hell of a nerve calling me fat.”
Angus grinned; slapped his belly with a lunatic show of good humor. “This isn’t fat. It’s brains. I think with my guts. That’s why I’m still alive.”
The captain snorted. “Are you sure you’ve changed your mind? Maybe it’s just indigestion.”
Angus shook his head. “I don’t trust you, fat man. Sitting with you in your cabin to keep you out of trouble sounds good in theory. In practice it has a couple of problems.”
Dolph cocked an eyebrow; waited for Angus to go on.
Dishonestly cheerful, Angus explained, “As far as I’m concerned, you’re the most dangerous man aboard. I’m not worried about the high-and-mighty Min Donner. She has her own reasons for letting Morn take over. Hell, she’s wearing them like a shipsuit, she can’t hide anything.” He dismissed the ED director with a shrug. “Besides, Morn can handle her.”
“But you don’t think you can handle me?” Captain Ubikwe drawled.
Angus grinned again. “I know you, fat man. This is your ship. Giving up command isn’t easy. Not for you. I think you don’t give a good shit what Director Donner orders you to do. I think you’re already plotting to get your ship back.”
Dolph made a show of incredulity. “Like how?”
“I don’t know,” Angus sneered. “Maybe you’ve got an intercom pickup hidden in your san. Maybe you can fart in code, tell your people to mutiny without saying a word.” He laughed humorlessly. His zone implants projected a manic amusement which bordered on gaiety. “It might be fun to watch you, see how you do it. But there’s another problem.”
“Somehow,” Dolph growled, “I know you’re going to tell me what that is.”
“Damn right I am.” Anger and fear he couldn’t express frayed the edges of Angus’ tone. “We’re in command at the moment,” Morn and Davies and Mikka and Vector held the bridge, “but that doesn’t change the fact this whole exercise is a deathtrap. You fucking cops want us dead. Even if you think you don’t, you will. And there’re just too goddamn many of you.
“We need a back door,” he pronounced, “a way out.”
Dolph didn’t react. He simply stared at Angus as if he thought the illegal had lost his mind.
“Morn doesn’t worry about things like that.” Angus gathered sarcasm in place of fear as he went along. “Which is why she’s tough enough to handle your Min Donner. When she goes, she goes all the way.
“But I don’t like it. It makes my stomach hurt.”
“Get to the point,” Captain Ubikwe said darkly. “I don’t like standing here.”
Angus bared his teeth. “You don’t really want to go sit in your cabin.” His tone was poisonously sweet. “If you can’t start a mutiny, you’ll just feel sorry for yourself. So instead I’ll let you come with me. Help me invent a way out.”
“What if I say no?” Dolph countered. “What if I like feeling sorry for myself?”
“You don’t want to do that,” Angus promised. “For one thing, I’ll have to tie you up, drag you along—and that’s so undignified. And for another”—he spread his hands—“you won’t find out what my back door is.”
Dolph studied Angus speculatively. “Do you really think you can tie me up and drag me?” he asked.
“I’m a goddamn cyborg, fat man,” Angus rasped. “You’ve already seen my lasers. And I’ve got plenty of other enhancements.” His reinforced muscles and microprocessor reflexes made him more than a match for the captain. “Of course I can do it.
“But I would rather have help.” Abruptly he scowled as if he were making a concession. “Who knows? You and your queen of muscle might end up needing a way out as much as I do.”
Captain Ubikwe considered for a moment. Fury he couldn’t afford to express compressed his lips, tightened his fleshy cheeks. “Since you put it that way,” he rumbled finally, “I’ll go along. For a while, anyway. It’ll be interesting to see how you plan to betray your friends.”
Betray—? Angus felt a sudden desire to bury his fist in the captain’s thick abdomen; but his zone implants stifled the impulse instantly. You sonofabitch! You goddamn cops took my ship away from me, and you fucking dismantled her! You don’t have the right to accuse me of anything.
Morn was all he had left.
Still none of his turmoil showed. His pain and urgency were as impotent as babies. “Good,” he jeered. “You’re learning to think with your guts instead of your gonads. Someday you’ll thank me for teaching you how to do that.”
Brusquely he turned back toward the lift.
The keypad beside the doors included an intercom. Watching Dolph sidelong so that the captain couldn’t take him by surprise, he thumbed the pickup toggle. As soon as the indicators came to life, he drawled amiably, “Bridge, this is Angus.”
A moment passed before Morn’s voice answered. “What is it, Angus?” She sounded thin with distance and strain; emaciated by the small speaker.
Angus didn’t hesitate: he was too scared. “Captain Ubikwe and I are going to visit Trumpet. Clear it for me. I don’t want to have to argue with anybody on the way.”
Morn’s tone sharpened. “What’re you doing, Angus?” Apparently the effort of outfacing Min Donner, as well as managing Captain Ubikwe’s command, took a toll.
“Don’t ask,” Angus retorted. “You don’t need to know.” Trust me, Morn. Haven’t I done everything you want? I’m just not in the mood to see any of us end up dead. Before she could reply, he added, “Send Ciro to join us. He isn’t doing you any good. He can help me and Captain Ubikwe.”
Ciro could save time and trouble by showing Angus where and how he’d damaged the
drives. And there might be other possibilities, if Ciro felt bad enough to listen to them—
The intercom hinted at protests. Mikka or Davies—or even Min Donner—may have been arguing with Morn. But Morn didn’t make Angus wait. “All right,” she answered as if she’d heard his unspoken appeal. “Consider it done. Ciro is on his way.”
At once the intercom speaker clicked silent.
Dolph had planted his fists on his hips as if he was about to turn stubborn. “What do you want that boy for?” he demanded. “He’s already scared out of his head. He doesn’t need to help you. He needs treatment.”
Angus didn’t respond directly. Instead he took Dolph’s arm, drew him back toward the lift. “Come on.” Relief and his zone implants made him positively companionable. “Let’s find out how much the fucking Academy taught you about drive repair.”
Captain Ubikwe opened his mouth in surprise; but he didn’t hold back.
Angus released his grip. With Dolph beside him, he headed for the airlock which linked Punisher to his crippled ship.
WARDEN
Urgent activity concentrated the atmosphere of Center. Nearly a hundred men and women sat at their consoles, studying data, typing furiously, barking or croaking into their pickups. Communications alone required at least fifty techs. One of them hailed the approaching defensive insistently, demanding some kind of response: the others had different duties. Some coordinated UMCPHQ’s efforts to protect itself. Others organized the cordon of ships; flared tight-beamed warnings and instructions to the planet’s diverse clutter of orbital platforms; rerouted in-system traffic; fielded panic from every direction. A team of specialists managed the massive job of downloading information—from Data Storage as well as DA’s dedicated computers—to secure planet-side megaCPUs. And members of Koina’s PR staff began the impossible job of preparing Earth’s vast population for disaster.
In addition, data techs worked to glean and interpret every available fact about the alien vessel. Operations sent platoons to ready the evac boats. Gunners tested targ, charged cannon. Engineers rotated the station to present its best guns and strongest shields toward the defensive.