Slowly Morn turned away from him as if she couldn’t bear the sight any longer. Her gaze seemed to rake welts across his soul as it shifted toward Min. For a long moment the two women faced each other as if they were trying to bridge a gulf. Then Morn said in a constricted tone, “Communications, give me a channel to Director Dios.”
Cray didn’t hesitate. Murmuring, “Right away,” she typed commands to reestablish Punisher’s connection through UMCPHQ Center to Calm Horizons.
While Cray worked, Min glanced at Captain Ubikwe. “If I remember right, Dolph,” she remarked, “we don’t have a shuttle.”
“That’s true,” he confirmed. “We’ll have to use the command module.” A conflicted nausea darkened his eyes. He looked sick at the idea of surrendering Davies and Vector—and at the consequences of not surrendering them. “Unless Captain Thermopyle volunteers to run Trumpet over there.” But he didn’t wait for Angus to reject the suggestion. “Bydell,” he ordered, “tell the ship to secure for detachment. Inform the auxiliary bridge I want them ready to take over in fifteen minutes. I’ll assign crew for the module as soon as we have a deal with Calm Horizons.”
“Aye, Captain.” Quickly Bydell activated her pickup and began sending Punisher’s people to their tasks.
Cray raised her head. “Ensign Hyland,” she announced in a bleak voice, “I have a channel to Director Dios.”
A new clench of anxiety gripped the bridge. Patrice and Porson straightened themselves at their stations. Like a woman who had no part to play in what followed, Min adjusted her throat pickup and resumed exchanging orders and information with Center. She may have sold her soul to Warden Dios, but she kept her word to Morn.
Morn acknowledged communications with a stiff nod. She thumbed her command pickup; and Cray put Calm Horizons’ transmission on the bridge speakers.
“Morn,” Dios said at once. Static like the sound of crumpling, hardcopy covered his voice. Nevertheless his increasing urgency was palpable. “Have you reached a decision yet? I can’t wait much longer. This ship is running out of patience.”
Davies raised his head, instinctively responsive to the UMCP director. Morn’s features had tightened to stone. Vector sighed quietly to himself.
None of them understood what was about to happen.
“Director Dios,” Morn answered. Her own voice held steady, despite the cost of losing her son. “I realize you’re in a difficult position. We’re doing the best we can.”
At once Dios retorted, “I don’t want excuses, Morn. I want action.” Somehow he’d turned up a rheostat; dialed the intensity of his tone to a new level. “I want to get this defensive out of here with as much of the planet intact as possible.”
Angus trembled at the force Warden conveyed. The UMCP director had a gift for command; for making people want to obey him—trust him. Angus himself had almost believed it when Dios told him, It’s got to stop.
Shaking with tension—inside his shipsuit, where no one could see it—he began to pace the bridge as Davies had done earlier; push his mortality across the cruiser’s deceleration g. He needed movement. Hell, he needed to run. Get out of here and never look back. Ignite Trumpet’s drives cold. Hide behind Punisher while he put as much distance as possible between himself and Calm Horizons. Then burn for the gap—
As soon as Morn answered, Warden would have all the information he needed to make his own decisions. He would know the situation; would be done considering it.
And Angus would be lost.
Yet he didn’t try to escape. Regardless of the terror which had ruled his life, he remained on Punisher’s bridge, pacing.
Morn gave no sign that she knew he was taking a stand. She didn’t realize what was about to happen. She cared too much about Davies and Dios, about millions of lives and police corruption, to recognize the danger.
“Then I won’t drag this out,” she told Dios and Calm Horizons. Her tone was cold and distant; desperately compelled. “Davies and Vector have agreed to give themselves up. Punisher will detach her command module to transport them.
“But Angus has refused.” She swallowed fiercely to clear her throat. “And so do I.”
In response a hollow quiet filled the speakers. Warden must have covered his pickup with his hand—presumably so he could talk to Vestabule. Thrust emission inflected the silence while everyone on Punisher’s bridge waited.
Sounds that might have been prayers filled Angus’ head; but he hardly knew what he was praying for.
Then Warden said, “That’s not good enough, Morn.” Pressure congested his voice. “The Amnion don’t consider it acceptable.”
Morn closed her fists in front of her; tightened them until her forearms quivered.
“Too bad,” she replied sharply. “I am in command here. And while I’m in command, nobody will be forced to do something like this. Angus says no. That’s his decision. And I say no. That’s mine.
“The Amnion have already had their turn with me,” she explained without relenting. “And I still have work to do.”
She may have meant to remind him of what was at stake on Suka Bator.
“Tell that warship to kill us now or take what we offer.” She sounded as uncompromising as a knife. “They don’t have any other alternatives.”
The speakers reported another covered silence: more discussion or conflict Punisher couldn’t hear. Angus paced the deck as if each heavy tread were an act of protest. Davies made a tired effort to get to his feet; then changed his mind and subsided. Vector’s mouth moved, although he didn’t make a sound: he may have been counting the seconds under his breath.
After two or three heartbeats, Captain Ubikwe rumbled softly, “Ensign Hyland, I wish you would let Glessen back on targ. If that Amnioni fires, I want someone fighting for us who isn’t just about comatose with exhaustion.”
Morn ignored him. Mikka didn’t so much as turn her head.
“Stand by,” Min told Center. Her tone was almost gentle. “I think it’s now or never. If Calm Horizons doesn’t start to shoot in the next ten minutes, we may actually survive.”
“Morn,” Warden said abruptly from the speakers, “the Amnion accept your refusal. As you say, they’ve already had their turn with you. They acknowledge that.”
Fucking right, Angus growled to himself. The sight of Morn’s suffering when he’d rescued her from the Amnion sector of Billingate still haunted him.
“But they insist on Angus,” Warden continued, as harsh as welding. “He did more damage than they can tolerate. If he doesn’t give himself up, we don’t have a deal.”
Angus faltered in his pacing; turned a gaze full of involuntary dismay toward the command station. Min swore viciously, then resumed talking to Center. Davies looked back and forth between Angus and Morn as if he no longer understood them.
Morn kept her attention fixed on her pickup. Davies had agreed to go over to Calm Horizons. Nothing else could reach her. For the second time she said, “Too bad.” Without turning her head, she raised her voice to reach everyone on the bridge. “Mikka, prepare to fire. On my order.”
Angus stopped moving altogether. Across the bridge he stared at Morn. She was risking war, wholesale butchery—She’d transcended him again; raised her resolve and her self to heights he couldn’t match. The things he and Nick and Warden Dios had done to her had made her greater than all of them.
Croaking a curse, Dolph slapped at his belts, surged out of his g-seat. In a rush he moved to the targ station. “For God’s sake, woman,” he hissed at Mikka, “let somebody who isn’t half-asleep do this job!”
Mikka faced him with a glare like a fist. Her hands on the matter cannon keys had become as steady as servos.
At the same time Warden warned quickly, “Morn, don’t do anything stupid. There has to be a way around this.”
Morn’s jaws clenched. “Make it good,” she told the pickup. “I don’t sell human beings.”
What had she said earlier?—when she’d decided to help Angus edit
his datacore? We’re cops. We don’t use people. Now she showed again that she meant what she said.
Shouts rose against the restraint of Angus’ zone implants. He wanted to roar at the speakers, You hear that, Dios? There’s at least one member of the goddamn UMCP who means what she says!
For a moment Warden paused. Morn had shamed him; or he needed to listen to Vestabule. When he spoke again, his voice seemed to freeze the blood in Angus’ veins.
“Speaking of selling, is Angus still there? Will you let me talk to him?”
Angus meant to yell, No! before Morn could reply. Don’t let him do this to me! But the cry stuck in his throat. She blocked it by looking at him. As far as she knew, there was nothing to fear. Her gaze said as clearly as words, I’m willing to start a war to protect your freedom. What’re you willing to do?
And he wanted to match her. That may have been the only thing he’d ever truly wanted.
“Oh, hell,” he muttered. His zone implants enabled him to maintain the pretense of steadiness. “If it’ll make him feel better, I’ll let him argue with me.”
At once she turned away. “Go ahead, Director Dios,” she said in a tight voice. “Angus can hear you.”
Now Warden didn’t delay. “Angus,” he said through the static, “I’m with an Amnioni called Marc Vestabule. In effect, he’s the captain here. He’s been ‘invested with decisiveness.’ But he used to be human.
“He says he knows you.”
That surprised Angus. He locked his arms across his chest; clamped his teeth together until the corners of his jaw ached. “He’s probably lying,” he snarled back, although he feared Vestabule might be telling the truth. “Even if he isn’t, what makes him think I care?”
“He used to crew on a ship called Viable Dreams.” Heavy with accusation, Warden’s reply carried through the static. “He says you captured his ship, took him and twenty-seven other members of the crew captive. Then you hauled them off to Billingate and sold them all to the Amnion.
“He hasn’t told me what you were paid for that, but I think I can guess.”
Oh, shit.
At once a stricken silence fell across the bridge. Min jerked up her head: an instant of fury flamed in her eyes; stretched her lips back from her teeth. Mikka lowered her head to the targ board, covered her skull and the back of her neck with her arms. Curses gathered savagely in Glessen’s face; Patrice’s; Porson’s.
If his zone implants hadn’t held him, Angus would have staggered. Dios caught him with a charge he couldn’t answer; turned the bridge against him. Morn and Davies knew about Viable Dreams: he’d told them to explain how he’d learned to edit datacores. In spite of that, Morn had made the decision to help free him from his priority-codes. But everyone else—
Only Ciro didn’t react. Morn hid her face behind her hair.Davies lifted a look of dull speculation toward his father. Min’s hands strained for the gun she no longer carried.
In dismay Vector croaked, “You did what?”
Then Glessen and Cray started to shout.
Mikka’s shoulders shook as if she were weeping. “Oh, God. I never knew—” A sound like a sob closed her throat. “Your own kind, Angus? Your own kind?”
Abruptly she wrenched Up her head; cried as if her heart were torn, “What have you done to my brother? What in God’s name have you been telling him?”
At the same time Captain Ubikwe wheeled to face the command station. “Christ on a crutch, Ensign Hyland!” he roared. “And you listen to this bastard when he asks you to trust him? Are you insane?”
“You amaze me, Angus,” Vector went on. Disgust or grief crumpled his round face. “I didn’t think I could still be horrified. I thought Nick cauterized that part of me years ago.”
Morn didn’t touch her pickup; let Warden Dios hear it all.
Dread rose like fire in Angus’ heart. If the revulsion around him mounted high enough, these people might call his bluff; might push him until they discovered that his programming still prevented him from hurting them. As long as they didn’t threaten Morn, he might not be able to defend himself at all.
One way or another, they could force him aboard the command module. Even if his datacore allowed him to put up a fight, Punisher’s crew could overwhelm him with sheer numbers.
He couldn’t bear it.
“Stop that!” he yelled like the report of a gun.
His shout seemed to crack against the bulkheads; fracture into echoes arid old hurt. Darkness mottled his face: blood and dirt marked his skin like livid stigmata. His heavy arms beat anguish against his sides.
“Stop it! You haven’t earned the right to be so tucking self-righteous with me!”
Instinctively he aimed his rage like despair at Morn. There was no one else he could ask for help. “Tell them!” he demanded. “Tell them this is the only reason you’re still alive!”
She shook her head. She was capable of opening fire on Calm Horizons; capable of refusing him. “You tell them.”
For an instant he gaped at her. Then he whirled; grabbed Davies by the front of his shipsuit; ripped the boy to his feet.
“Tell them!”
Davies resembled his father, but he had Morn’s eyes. He met Angus’ desperation without flinching; without hesitating.
“She’s right. You tell them.”
He might have said, Don’t try to make us responsible for your crimes.
With a strangled howl, Angus pushed Davies away.
An emotional convulsion came over him. Alone in the center of the bridge, with loathing all around him and nowhere to turn, he raised his fists to his head, set his knuckles against his skull. At that moment he was utterly and absolutely determined to cut his brain open with laser fire; squeeze coherent ruin into the core of his pain—
His programming declined to permit it. His zone implants sent out their emissions. Without transition he passed from despair to a sickening, fatal calm. His horror remained. The rage of his personal furies went on. Their wings seemed to labor in the background of his mind, covering him with their shadows; clattering for his heart. But the wildness disappeared from his body. Helpless to do otherwise, he lowered his arms.
Briefly he scanned the bridge. He might have been considering it the same way Warden Dios did. Then he picked Min Donner. You tell them. Since Morn had abandoned him, Min was the highest authority here. Despite the combative fury in her eyes, the judgment which lined her mouth, he moved toward her.
She met him with her fists poised to strike, as if he were an enemy she intended to defeat with her bare hands.
Dolph started forward to give her his support; but Morn halted him with a sharp gesture.
“Yes, I did that,” Angus told Min’s knotted outrage. Stifled vehemence seemed to strangle him; but only a hint of it showed in his voice. “Sold all fucking twenty-eight of them. And the Amnion paid me by teaching me how to edit datacores.” He grinned at the sudden shock in her gaze; the instant recoil. “It’s supposed to be impossible, but I can do it.”
As if she were unaware of them, Min lowered her arms.
Stiffly he went on, “That’s why Com-Mine Security couldn’t find enough evidence to execute me. I deleted it. And it’s why I don’t have to listen to my priority-codes. I blocked them.”
Everyone on the bridge stared at him. Min studied him as if he were about to reach critical mass. Mikka watched with her face full of tears. Under his breath Vector muttered something that might have been, “Well, damn.”
From his g-seat Ciro smiled at Angus like a soul mate.
“If I hadn’t done that,” Angus said quietly while acid frothed and spat inside him, “they would all be dead by now. Why do you suppose that asshole Fasner wanted Nick to have my priority-codes? So Nick would kill them. But first he would have hurt them so much they would have begged to die.
“I saved them,” he insisted. “Because I could. Because I sold Vestabule’s goddamn ship.”
And because Morn had released him.
&n
bsp; Abruptly he flung out his arm. Trembling with desperation and strain he couldn’t show, he pointed an accusation at the speakers.
“He knew about it.” The director of the UMCP. “He knew. Before he ever put me aboard Trumpet, and sent me to Billingate, and let Milos torture me, he knew. He told me so.” At last he found the strength to raise his voice: his datacore allowed it. “He’s been counting on it!
“And he’s still counting on it. I don’t know what the flick he thinks he’s doing, but I am shit-positive he’s still counting on what I can do! He’s using all of us, right now, the same way he’s always used us!”
Now Min’s face showed nothing, gave nothing. She concentrated on absorbing what she heard.
Finally Morn intervened. “That’s enough, Angus.” She didn’t shout. Nevertheless a vibration of force in her tone stopped him. “It doesn’t make any difference. Not now. Not here. We can all yell about this later.”
She may not have wanted Vestabule to hear him explain what he meant.
Roughly he swung away from Min to confront Morn across the gap between their stations. If he could have acted of his own free will, he would have howled, wailed, Do you think I fucking care what fucking Vestabule hears? You don’t have the right to despise me! But now it wasn’t his zone implants that restrained him: it was Morn herself. The impacted hurt in her gaze told him how she would respond.
While I’m in command, nobody will be forced to do something like this.
I don’t sell human beings.
I need a better answer.
Mikka, prepare to fire.
She may have been the only one here who could imagine how much harm his welding had done him. If he couldn’t match her, he could at least try not to get in her way.
He took a step or two toward her, then stopped like a man who didn’t believe in himself enough to go on. Instead of resisting her, he groaned in the direction of her pickup, “Are you listening, Dios? Do you like what you hear?”
Then he lapsed into silence as if his zone implants had shut him down.
His voice conflicted by static, Warden replied at once, “Oh, I hear you, all right. I hear you fine.” Then he added, “So does Vestabule. You’ve betrayed one of their secrets. Now he has even more reason to prefer a war if you don’t give yourself up.