A Dark and Hungry God Arises

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Her glower swung back to Angus. “The four of us are interested in rescuing Morn. If the Amnion haven’t already finished her. But Nick isn’t. You’ve got to understand that. He hates her—he wants them to have her. If he told you anything else, he was lying.

  “He’s only here because the Bill barred him from Captain’s Fancy. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  Neither of the men behind her moved. Only the kid nodded.

  Angus believed her. Her face looked as honest as a fist. If she’d helped keep his son away from the Amnion, he could count on her to help him reach Morn as well.

  Somehow the virile and invulnerable Captain Succorso had succeeded at driving his own people to mutiny.

  “Too bad, Mikka,” Nick snarled. “Nice try.” His air of casual superiority had deserted him: he looked frayed and vicious. “But Angus already knows my reasons don’t matter. If this is the only choice I have left, so much the better for him. He wants my help. Now he’s got it.

  “The truth is,” he finished, “you haven’t got anywhere else to go either.”

  The engineer, Vector Shaheed, spoke for the first time. “You’re wrong, Nick.” His tone was like his face and his eyes, too calm to be normal. Nevertheless Angus didn’t hear cat in it: he heard old pain; pain which had been suppressed so long that it dulled everything around it. “We’ve already told you—we could have gone to the Bill. We could have gone to Captain Chatelaine. Either of them would have been”—he smiled wanly—“fascinated to hear about your adventures on Enablement.”

  Angus would have been fascinated himself. Old instincts shrilled at him, warning him that what Nick had done on Enablement was important. Unfortunately his programming had no instincts. The countdown running in his mechanical mind ticked inexorably shorter.

  “Discuss it later,” he demanded. “Right now I need answers.

  “Have any of you done high-tension work?”

  Vector, Mikka, and the kid all nodded.

  “Angus,” Nick put in, “I’m going to help you, but only on one condition.” Without transition his manner changed again. He was like a kaleidoscope, different at every turn. Now he sounded companionable and relaxed, as if he were among friends. “I need to talk to Captain’s Fancy. I can do it while you get organized. My command third doesn’t know what to do. She probably doesn’t know I’ve been barred. As long as she thinks she has to wait for me, she’s paralyzed.”

  Angus wanted to snap, Shut up, asshole. If you ever talk to your ship again, it’ll be over my dead body. His datacore had other priorities, however. Apparently its unintuitive logic had assigned Nick the status of a UMCP officer in need of assistance.

  Helpless to do anything else, Angus pointed at Milos’ station. “You can access communications there. Just don’t screw up—don’t let Operations hear you.”

  Grinning ferally, Nick slid into the command second’s g-seat and put his hands on the board.

  The abyss lurking at the back of Angus’ mind taunted him. He wondered if his programming had just forced him to make a terrible mistake.

  But he couldn’t think about that. As if it were recircuiting neurons, his zone implants tuned one ear to listen to Nick. The rest of him focused on Nick’s people.

  “Have you got EVA training? You know how to use guns?”

  Davies shook his head, then nodded in confusion as he remembered Morn’s experience in the Academy.

  “We aren’t exactly trained for it,” Vector answered, “but we’ve all done EVA. Pu—Ciro and I’ve never had to use guns.”

  “All right.” Pieces clicked into place in Angus’ plans. “You’re my high-tension crew. Davies, you’re with them. It’s your job to keep them safe. When you’re done, you can cover our retreat.”

  “I don’t understand,” Davies put in. “You haven’t told me what you’re planning.”

  Angus ignored him. “The rest of us—Nick, Mikka, Sib, and me—are going to get Morn out.” Brutal as impact fire, he added, “Or kill her if the Amnion have already mutated her.”

  At the same time he listened hard to what Nick was doing. But Nick addressed his ship entirely in written code: he didn’t say a word. His fingers raced on the board, typing like volleys in a barrage. Under his concentrated gaze, his scars hinted at darkness.

  “We’re going EVA,” Angus explained, “so we don’t have to deal with the Bill’s muscle. We’ll cross the docks and the rock to the Amnion installation—roughly three k. We’ll cut our way in. That’s the easy part. The hard part will be finding her.”

  And surviving. Angus had already realized that he was effectively powerless against the Amnion. If his datacore hadn’t ordered otherwise, for its own reasons, he would have been tempted to protect Vector and Ciro himself, and send Davies after Morn.

  “Once we find her, we either deal with her or grab her. We’ll take an EVA suit for her—that’s your job,” he told Sib. It wouldn’t hurt to encumber Mackern with an extra suit. He didn’t look like he was good with a gun in any case. “As soon as she’s in it, we’ll come back the way we went.”

  And if we can do all that, if you’re still alive, and I come back in one piece, and the Bill hasn’t burned Trumpet open, we’ll try to figure out how to get away from here.

  “You make it sound a little too simple,” Mikka remarked through her teeth.

  Davies nodded urgently. Sib’s eyes showed white.

  Angus grimaced at her. “There are only three dangers—aside from the chance the Amnion will shoot us before we can shoot them.” Or the chance that Angus himself would be paralyzed; perhaps turned against these people. “The Bill might decide to send his guards EVA. Or some ship might pick us up on scan and warn Operations. Calm Horizons could do it.”

  “Soar could do it,” Nick put in while he worked. “She left dock just a few minutes ago.”

  “Or,” Angus continued, “the Amnion might call out the Bill’s dogs after we attack. In fact, they’ll do that for sure.

  “Vector and Ciro are going to solve all those problems for us.”

  Mikka, Davies, and the others waited. Angus didn’t elaborate, however. He didn’t want Nick to know what he had in mind; didn’t want Nick to tell his ship. Everything Succorso touched had too many possibilities for treachery.

  “Finish it, Nick,” he demanded. “We’ve got to go.”

  “Done.” Nick keyed off the board and stood up. “I’m ready. I like simple plans—they leave room for inspiration.” As if he’d recovered his superiority, he faced Angus with his fists on his hips and a grin on his teeth. “There’s just one more thing you have to explain.

  “Where the fucking hell is Milos?”

  Nausea twisted in Angus’ guts, but he shrugged as if he didn’t care. “I’m not sure. I think he’s gone to the Amnion.”

  Nick’s people were stunned: Nick himself looked poleaxed. “He what?”

  Since leaving UMCPHQ, Angus had gained only one thing he actually wanted: he’d gotten rid of Milos Taverner. The cost of that victory was probably going to be more than he could bear. Warden Dios, may he rot in hell, hadn’t planned this operation well enough.

  Scowling acidly, Angus pointed at the companionway. “You heard me. Let’s get going.”

  “But that means he’s told them we’re coming!” Nick protested raggedly.

  No, it means he’s told them my priority codes. He’s told them how to turn me off.

  “Sure,” Angus agreed. “But he hasn’t told them how. He doesn’t know.”

  And the Amnion don’t know I’ve got help. They won’t try to stop us because they’re planning to shut me down. That way they think they can catch me and Davies.

  Angus could protect his son. Unfortunately his datacore didn’t let him do what was necessary to defend himself.

  “Wait a minute,” Nick insisted, “wait a minute,” as if he were on the verge of panic. “You told me he talked to them—even before he talked to me. How long has he been working for them?”

 
; “How the fuck should I know?” Angus could feel the mouth of the abyss closing around his heart. “But he must have started before you bastards framed me.” Before you got me into this. “He’s been too busy since then to start anything that complicated.”

  “But that means—” Nick’s mouth hung open in shock.

  “It means,” Mikka grated, “the Amnion knew the truth about you when we went to Enablement. Your bugger must have told them. They already knew you were cheating them. That’s why they tried to kill us in the gap—why they used us for an acceleration experiment. And that’s why they tried so hard to get Davies before we left. They assumed he was going to die when we did.”

  Cold with concentration, as intent as his father, Davies watched her as if he were testing what she said against what he could remember. “But that doesn’t explain why I’m so important. What do they want me for?”

  Angus wanted to howl in frustration. Maybe his zone implants would have let him. Before he could make the attempt, however, an automatic relay tripped on his command board, opening a channel to Billingate Operations.

  At once the Bill’s voice burst from the bridge speakers.

  “Captain Angus, you motherfucking sonofabitch, you’re finished!” He sounded frantic, almost hysterical. “I’ll get you for this—I’m going to fry you as soon as you try to leave.

  “In the meantime, I’m cutting you off. No more power, no more air, no more operational data. Live with that if you can, you shitbag! You can supply your own life support, but you need operational data.”

  Then the transmission ended as if he’d silenced his pickup with a hammer.

  Full of artificial calm and native horror, Angus announced, “I’m only going to say this one more time. If we don’t go now, we’ll lose our chance.”

  Leaving Nick’s dismay and Davies’ concentration and Sib’s chagrin behind, he headed up the companionway.

  Light and quick in Thanatos Minor’s g, Mikka followed on his heels.

  By the time he reached the passage running through Trumpet’s core, boots rattled on the rungs as more people came after him.

  His son must have been immediately behind Mikka. As Angus strode toward the weapons locker, he heard her answer Davies’ question.

  “The Amnion want to solve the problem of mutating human beings without destroying their minds.” She was trying to help the boy again. “They want to make Amnion who look and talk and remember exactly like human beings. When Morn survived giving you her mind, they started to think zone implants are the answer. You’re their chance to study the consequences of what she did. So they can refine their mutagens.”

  “Which is why,” Angus said over his shoulder for no reason he could name, “I want you to protect Vector and Ciro, instead of coming with me. I don’t want to risk letting those fuckers get their hands on you.”

  He had no idea if that was the truth.

  On the other hand, he knew exactly how Morn would react if he rescued her—and lost her son in the process.

  He’d never looked in Trumpet’s weapons locker: he hadn’t had time. But a database gave him the codes. He tapped them into the keypad of the lock and swung open the door.

  “Jesus!” Mikka breathed. “That’s not a weapons locker, that’s an arsenal.”

  Angus saw armaments of all kinds: handguns, rifles, lasers, blasters; a variety of knives; mortars, grenades, and other explosives; enough destructive capability to equip an expeditionary force. An inventory scrolled through his head, but he ignored it. The countdown ran remorselessly. He picked out a couple of limpet mines, a small, precise laser, and a miniaturized matter cannon. In this case “miniaturized” meant the gun was longer than his leg and twice as heavy; if he was lucky, it carried enough charge to fire three times. Hefting it, he stepped aside to let other people at the locker.

  Mikka took an impact rifle and a laser. Following her example, Davies added a laser to the rifle he already carried. Sib chose two handguns, but wasn’t comfortable with them; he put one back. Vector grabbed a couple of stubby projectile launchers—weapons which were useless at any distance, but which could hardly miss at close range. He gave one to Ciro and pulled the kid past the locker.

  Nick didn’t linger over his selection. He helped himself to two handguns, an impact rifle, a clip of grenades—

  Angus slapped the locker shut, nearly catching Nick’s fingers, and headed aft to the compartment where the EVA suits were stowed.

  Except for the ones which fit him and Milos, they were of standard sizes—more of them than Trumpet’s official passenger capacity would ever need. One glance told Angus he’d never seen suits like them before. They were normal in most respects: flexible mylar and plexulose constructs with polarizing faceplates, air tanks, powerpacks, helmet radios, belt clips for tools or guns. But he couldn’t see how the maneuvering jets worked.

  Impersonally efficient, a database supplied the answer.

  “Take a suit,” he told Mikka and the others. “Set communications for”—he named a frequency at random. “That way we can talk without being heard—unless somebody stumbles on our setting.

  “This won’t be zero g, but you should know how to use the jets. They’re more responsive than you’re used to—more maneuverable. They work like waldos. Inside the suit there’s a harness. It clips around your waist and through your crotch. Toggles are on the chest plate. When it’s active, it reads how you move your hips and fires the jets, left, right, up, down, whatever you want.

  “They take practice, so you’d better hope you don’t need them.”

  Angus didn’t doubt that his computer already knew how to control the jets perfectly.

  Cramped in the narrow passage, Mikka and the men began stumbling into suits. Davies kept himself as far from Nick as possible. Ciro and Sib both needed help with the unfamiliar equipment: Vector and Mikka assisted them. Nick talked aimlessly about Trumpet’s resources; but no one paid any attention to him. Angus’ programming supplied a checklist. He put down his weapons to run through it.

  From the pocket of his shipsuit he took out a small transmitter like a zone implant control, transferred it to one of the pouches of his EVA suit. Then he pulled on his suit and sealed it; clamped the limpets and laser to his belt. The cannon was too heavy for that, so he cradled it in his arms. At once he moved toward the lift.

  He was trying, trying not to listen to the claustrophobic hiss of air in his ears. It told him that he’d just sealed himself into a crypt, a crib; tied down so that the woman looming over him—a woman as vast as space, who should have been his mother—could fill him with pain like the void between the stars.

  EVA always terrified him.

  The countdown continued. His bluff wouldn’t hold much longer. As soon as the Bill panicked he would order his guards to start cutting. Then Trumpet would defend herself—but not with self-destruct. Instead she would trigger a power shutdown across as much of the installation as she could reach. Angus had arranged that during Nick’s absence.

  At the same time he’d done some extensive mapping of Billingate’s power supply, using equipment which no known Needle-class gap scout possessed. What he’d learned was of no use to him at the moment, however. For now only the shutdown mattered.

  It would keep Trumpet intact for two or three more minutes, no more. And it would be fatally premature if it happened before Vector and Ciro had carried out his plans.

  He was already sweating like a whole herd of swine, and he hadn’t even left the ship yet.

  Mikka joined him in the lift almost immediately, with Nick close behind her. “Are you sure all this stuff works?” Succorso’s voice sounded too loud in the confines of Angus’ helmet. Through two faceplates Nick looked like a ghoul: his scars resembled open wounds. “It’s so damn new, I don’t think it’s ever been tested.”

  “It works, Nick,” Mikka muttered. “Give us a break.”

  Nick regarded her steadily, as if he’d already decided how to kill her.

  Dav
ies was ready, but he waited for the other men; entered the lift last.

  Fighting his impulse to gasp, Angus sent the lift upward to Trumpet’s other airlock.

  Now Davies was the first one out. He positioned himself inside the lock beside the control panel, with his back to the wall and his rifle ready. He kept its muzzle pointed at Nick’s belly.

  Angus expected treachery from Succorso as much as his son did. But not here; not like this. It might happen once they reached the Amnion installation—or maybe when the group returned to Trumpet. Where Nick was concerned, Angus’ greatest fear wasn’t that Nick would betray him, but that his prewritten restrictions would prevent him from making Nick pay for it.

  With seven people packed together in the airlock, Angus gave Davies a nod. Davies turned to the control panel, tapped keys.

  The inner door slid shut.

  Compressors whined, pumping air out of the lock to avoid a burst of release into the vacuum. Angus’ EVA suit tightened around him, inflated by its internal atmosphere; his companions seemed to puff up as if they would float away as soon as the airlock let them go.

  He turned down the gain on his pickup so that Nick and the others wouldn’t hear him panting. EVA terrified him, small places and vast ones terrified him, but his zone implants didn’t give him any choice. Biting his lower lip hard, he faced the ladder to the outer door and waited for the airlock to open.

  When Trumpet’s servos pulled the door aside, he climbed up to it, stuck his head out, and got a glimpse of what Nick’s treachery entailed.

  The whole region of the visitors’ docks was awash in stark white light. This was normal: as fierce as fire, arc lamps on tall poles blazed in all directions, giving incoming ships visual confirmation of their approach attitudes and trajectories.

  Etched in illumination so intense that it seemed nearly phosphorescent, the landscape was at once ordinary and strange. For kilometers across the surface of the planetoid, Thanatos Minor’s native rock had been replaced by concrete—the reinforced outer face and abutments of Billingate.