Chaos and Order: The Gap Into Madness

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  But without it she had nothing left except shame.

  “You’re right.” She couldn’t meet his eyes, or Angus’. “I’m sorry. It’s withdrawal—I don’t know how to handle it.”

  “You know,” Vector offered quietly, “we might be able to find a dosage of cat that protects you without leaving you unconscious. If we titrate it right.”

  Morn didn’t respond. She meant withdrawal from the artificial stimulation of her zone implant. But she also meant withdrawal from the ability to transcend her limitations, rise above her flaws. And for that loss there was no drug to help her.

  Angus ran the swarm as smoothly as he could. With the chart Beckmann had supplied, Lab Center’s earlier operational input, and Trumpet’s penetrating sensors, he found ways through the throng of rock that didn’t require sudden course changes, emergency evasions. The gap scout slid from side to side on relatively gentle thrust, dodging out of the depths of the swarm.

  G pulled Morn in every conceivable direction. Her feet drifted off the deck; her body arced slowly this way and that. But the pressure didn’t threaten her. With one hand on a zero-g grip she was able to control her movement enough to avoid bruising herself against the bulkhead.

  Angus should have sent her off the bridge to protect her; or to protect Trumpet from what she might do if her gap-sickness took her. Instead he took care of her in other ways. Under the circumstances, she could afford to wait awhile.

  She clung to the bridge the same way she clung to her handgrip, using her presence at the center of decisions and action to help her manage the stresses pulling at her heart.

  At the second’s station, Davies worked obsessively, verifying and refining his mastery of the gap scout’s targ.

  Clinging, Morn studied the data he routed to one of the displays, and was dumbfounded by the power and complexity of Trumpet’s weaponry. The ship was a gap scout: according to her public specifications, she was totally unarmed. In any case, she should have been too small to carry heavy guns. But the UMCP’s researchers must have achieved miracles of miniaturization. The weapons Trumpet shouldn’t have had could deliver more destruction at greater distances than Morn would ever have guessed.

  Trumpet wasn’t equipped with lasers. They were problematic in any case; vulnerable to EM distortion as well as to the jolts and line fluctuations of the ships powering them. In battle it was difficult for human technologies to maintain coherence. But the gap scout had enough other armaments to make the absence of lasers seem trivial.

  She had impact guns for close combat; matter cannon for strikes at greater range; plasma torpedoes; static mines. And—amazingly—she also carried singularity grenades; devices at once so dangerous and so difficult to use that Morn’s instructors in the Academy had dismissed their value in actual combat. Theoretically, under the right conditions, they detonated to form black holes—tiny instances of mass so dense that their gravitic fields could suck down anything within their event horizons. Practically, however, the right conditions were nearly impossible to obtain. The grenade only produced a black hole if it detonated in the presence of enough other power—for instance, if the grenade went off inside an active thruster tube. Without external energies to feed it, the singularity was so tiny that it consumed itself and winked away before it could do any damage.

  The fact that Hashi Lebwohl—or Warden Dios—had seen fit to supply Trumpet with singularity grenades made Morn shiver so hard the muscles in her abdomen cramped.

  They had expected the gap scout to fight for her life. Probably alone—and probably against massive odds.

  What other expectations did they have for her?

  “Done,” Vector announced suddenly. Satisfaction and eagerness sharpened his voice. “I’m copying it to your board,” he told Angus. “You can start transmitting whenever you want.

  “Assuming we get the chance,” he added while he relayed his results. “Which I certainly hope we will. All this talk about fighting Soar and not being ashamed of ourselves”—he glanced pointedly at Davies, who ignored him—“is fine as far as it goes, but this message is a more effective weapon than any gun.”

  Morn nodded dully. He was right: his information about UMCPDA’s mutagen immunity drug was the most important thing Trumpet carried. In the end transmitting his message mattered more than whether or not the ship survived; whether Angus could be trusted, or Sib died; whether Morn or Davies lost their souls.

  The minute that data reached anyone who could understand it and disseminate it, the entire complex of plots and imperialism which humankind and the Amnion played out against each other would be transformed.

  Warden Dios might come down. The entire UMCP might topple. Holt Fasner himself could be threatened. And the Amnion would suffer a blow which might force them to end this war now, by attack or retreat, while they still had the chance.

  Whatever else happened, whatever it cost, Trumpet needed to transmit Vector’s message.

  “Got it,” Angus answered when the data transfer was complete. “We’re set to broadcast as soon as we get out of this swarm. We’ll spray it in all directions like a distress call. Eventually every receiver in the system will pick it up.” He bared his teeth. “That way whoever wants to stop us will know they’ve already lost.

  “Now get off the bridge.”

  Vector frowned as if Angus had insulted him.

  “Where you’re sitting isn’t exactly a combat station,” Angus explained. “You’ll be dead meat as soon as we hit hard g. Probably wreck the console, too. Go web yourself into your bunk.”

  “Ah,” Vector sighed in comprehension. “Of course.” He nodded. Projecting an air of pain, as if a flare-up of arthritis had settled in his joints while he worked, he undipped his zero-g belt, drifted off his seat.

  Instead of moving for the companionway, however, he floated toward Angus’ station. When he reached it, he caught the arm of the g-seat. Facing the displays instead of Angus, he remarked wearily, “I didn’t think I would ever say this, but I miss the days when I could stay on the bridge. If I’m going to die out here, I want to see it coming—God knows why. Maybe I hope I’ll have time to seek absolution at the last minute.” He smiled crookedly. “I wouldn’t want to risk repenting prematurely.

  “Will you tell us what’s happening?” He was looking at Morn, but his question must have been meant for Angus. “Mikka probably wants to know. I certainly do.”

  “If I have time,” Angus retorted impatiently. “Just go.”

  Vector sighed again; shrugged. “Right.”

  From Angus’ g-seat he launched himself stiffly toward the companionway. In a moment he’d climbed the rails and moved into the midship passage out of sight.

  Seeing him go like that, alone and unapplauded, touched Morn with sadness. He’d accomplished so much, and received so little for it. No matter what crimes he might have helped Nick commit, he didn’t need absolution; not as far as she was concerned. He’d already done something better than repent.

  “He could have stayed,” she murmured. “It wouldn’t have hurt us to give him a little companionship.”

  “No, he couldn’t,” Angus growled, concentrating on his board and the screens. “You should go, too. This isn’t safe.”

  His tone scraped a sore place in her, a raw nerve of panic. Urgency flushed her skin. He’d seen something, felt something—

  “What is it?”

  “I’m getting a scan echo.” Angus’ hands spidered over his board, scuttling to sharpen images and data. “If it isn’t a ghost, there’s another ship out here.”

  Davies gripped the edges of his console. “Is it Soar? Has she caught up with us this fast?”

  “It’s an echo,” Angus returned sourly. “It doesn’t have a fucking emission signature.

  “I. mean it,” he shot at Morn. “Get off the bridge. I’ve already seen what you’re like under heavy g. I don’t want to repeat the experience.”

  As if she were obedient, abraded with panic, she pushed off from t
he bulkhead in the direction of the companionway. But when she reached the rails, she reversed her trajectory, rebounded to the back of Angus’ g-seat.

  Whether or not the ship survived—

  She had no intention of leaving unless he physically forced her away.

  Despite her fear, she believed she could prevent him from doing that.

  “You’re spending too much time on the guns,” Angus snapped at Davies. “Concentrate on our defenses.” Trumpet had glazed surfaces to deflect lasers, energy shields to absorb impact fire, particle sinks to weaken matter cannon blasts. “The cops’re experimenting with dispersion fields. Might be more effective against matter cannon. There.”

  He hit keys, jerked data onto the screen Davies used.

  “But they aren’t automatic. If they were, we couldn’t fire through them. You have to be ready.”

  Davies looked up, studied the information. “All right,” he muttered. “I’m on it.”

  A small part of Morn’s mind was filled with wonder. A dispersion field was an elegant idea: project an energy wave to disrupt the matter beam before it took on mass from its target; disperse the forces. As Angus had said, however, none of Trumpet’s guns could be fired while the fields was being projected. And the resulting boson bleed-off would be staggering.

  The rest of her simply held to the back of Angus’ station as if she were praying.

  Past his shoulder she could see his readouts; his efforts to identify the scan echo. He was fast—God, he was fast. She’d never seen anyone run a board so swiftly. In some sense, he was a machine: a nearly integral extension of his ship.

  Elusive and undifferentiated, the echo seemed to flee under his fingers, becoming something else whenever he snatched at it. Yet it was too persistent to be a ghost. The conditions which could produce a ghost through the swarm’s static were evanescent: a false image would have vanished as suddenly as it appeared.

  “I’m getting a profile.” Angus might have spoken to himself. “Doesn’t look like Soar. Not as big. Damn this static.

  “It’s almost familiar. Shit, almost—”

  Familiar? Was it Punisher? Not likely: not if the ship was smaller than Soar.

  Morn couldn’t stay silent. She had to say, “If she isn’t Soar, she might not be hostile.”

  “That’s naive,” Davies snorted without glancing at her. “Whoever she is, she’s illegal. Around here she couldn’t be anything else. And by now she must know the Lab’s gone. She’ll have to assume we had something to do with it. She’ll shoot first, worry about the consequences later.

  “Besides, we can’t be sure Soar’s alone.” He sounded more like his father all the time. Leaving Morn behind—“She had plenty of friends back on Billingate.”

  “I told you,” Angus snapped at Morn, “to get off the bridge.”

  But he didn’t move to make her go. Maybe he assumed she would obey. Instead he thumbed his intercom, opened a ship-wide channel. “Secure for combat. Somebody’s after us.”

  How long before Trumpet reached the fringes of the swarm? Angus had left a navigation schematic running on one of the displays. Projections indicated that she had at least an hour to go. But she could do it in less—maybe much less—if Angus accelerated; ran helm with the same inhuman speed and precision he used to analyze scan.

  Angus, Morn meant to say, go faster. Get us out of here. We’ll be harder to hit. And we need to reach a place where we can start broadcasting.

  The words stuck in her throat.

  Without warning, the ship’s alarms shrilled. One of the screens broke up, scrambling to display new input: then it started scrolling data too fast for Morn to read.

  “There!” Angus barked. “God damn it, I’ve seen that signature before!”

  Scan had located another vessel, nudging her way between the rocks ahead.

  She emerged from behind an asteroid large enough to occlude a battlewagon, navigational thrust roaring to orient her on the gap scout. She was big, not the size of Soar, but several orders of magnitude bigger than Trumpet, possibly a merchanter, more likely an illegal hauler. Her emissions shouted signs of power: drive ready to burn; charged guns.

  Davies’ hands came down on his keys so hard that his shoulders hunched and his torso wrenched against his belts. Instantly Trumpet unleashed a barrage of impact and matter cannon fire.

  He hadn’t taken enough time to focus targ: his need to strike had betrayed him. Impact blasts licked along the other ship’s hull or skidded past her: the matter cannon shot wide.

  At once the ship nearly vanished from scan as asteroids burst like fragmentation bombs, filling the void with tons of debris which yowled and ricocheted up and down the spectrum.

  Bombardments of rock clanged off Trumpet’s skin and shields. The whole ship cried like a carillon.

  A heartbeat later the gap scout staggered and went blind as the other ship’s matter cannon covered her like the fall of an avalanche.

  The scan displays crackled and spat with distortion. Metal stress rang through the hulls: klaxons squalled like demented spirits. Hammering keys, Angus hauled Trumpet out of the line of fire, practically cartwheeling her in a blaze of thrust to put stone between her and the other ship’s guns.

  Morn knew what he was doing, even though she couldn’t see or hear him. She knew because her feet lifted from the deck; her own weight snatched her hands off the back of his g-seat as if her strength were trivial.

  Helpless as a cork, she swirled in the air and dovè headlong toward the starboard bulkhead.

  She tucked her head, arched her shoulder; turned in time to avoid shattering the bones of her head. Still her mass hit with its own hard g.

  The impact slapped her flat, pounded the air from her lungs, drove the blood from her brain. She seemed to slip out of herself as if she were being sucked into the wall.

  Somewhere nearby she heard Davies shouting.

  “It works! That dispersion field works!”

  No wonder Trumpet had gone blind. Her sensors and sifters couldn’t see anything except the raving chaos at the heart of the matter beam.

  I’ve seen that signature—

  Then Morn lost consciousness. She never knew whether the other ship fired again.

  DARRIN

  Damn Scroyle stared at the chaos which had taken the place of his scan displays; for a moment he froze. Around him his people gaped in astonishment and alarm.

  Trumpet was gone. Disappeared in boson madness. Until the sensors cleared, Free Lunch was blind and deaf; she might as well be weaponless. Scan and data fought with their instruments and programs, struggling to see through the particle storm; but it was too intense for them. And too unfamiliar—Free Lunch had never encountered anything like this before.

  Despite the emission carnage, however, Darrin was sure he hadn’t hurt the gap scout. No normal matter cannon blast caused results like that. If Trumpet’s drives had blown—if the ship had broken down to her component atoms—Free Lunch’s computers would have understood; would have filtered out the distortion in order to see the results.

  The gap scout was gone. Darrin couldn’t be sure that he’d so much as touched her.

  What in the name of Sanity was going on?

  “How did she do that?” Alesha demanded. A note of panic sharpened her voice. “We hit her dead on, I swear it. Even if she’s nothing but a particle sink, we hit her hard enough to smash her.”

  Darrin held up his hand to stop her. He needed silence; needed to think.

  Alesha frowned at him, bit her lip; but she obeyed.

  No one else spoke.

  Darrin scratched his chest, trying to pull his confusion into some form of order.

  Trumpet had fired at almost the same instant she came onto Free Lunch’s scan—too quickly for her targ to focus accurately. So she must have known Free Lunch was near; her targ officer must have been riding with his fingers on the keys, poised to attack.

  How had she known?

  When the Lab ceased operat
ional transmission in a blaze of static which suggested total disaster, Darrin had realized that the stakes in this contest were higher than he’d suspected; perhaps higher than Hashi Lebwohl had suspected. The only ship close enough to do the installation any damage had been Soar. Presumably Soar had come here from lost Billingate hunting Trumpet. Had Trumpet shared her cargo with Deaner Beckmann? Was that the reason his facility had experienced a disaster?

  Had Soar attacked the Lab?

  Deaner Beckmann had been betrayed: that was plain.

  Who was next?

  Damn’s instinct for survival screamed at him. It was time to cut and run. The stakes had become too high. Too high for what he was being paid; too high for what he knew about the other players. If Trumpet could do that, what else could she do? If an illegal ship like Soar was willing to attack an illegal installation like the Lab, what else would she do?

  Darrin Scroyle had survived for so many years because his instincts were good.

  “Any luck?” he asked scan.

  “We can’t handle it, Captain,” the man on scan answered. “The computers don’t know what to do with it. But it is dispersing. We should start getting data we can interpret in”—he consulted a readout—“make it two and a half minutes.”

  Two and half minutes before Free Lunch could see. Was Trumpet blind, too? Or did she know how to penetrate this charged storm? Was she moving now, taking a position to tear her opponent apart?

  “Too long,” Darrin decided. Because his people were afraid, he made a particular effort to sound calm. “We can’t wait.

  “Helm, back us out of here. You’ll have to assume nothing’s changed since we went blind. I don’t care—just do it. I’m not interested in being a sitting target. Try to put that asteroid between us and the center of the storm. Maybe the rock will shield us enough to clear scan.”

  “Right, Captain.” The helm first’s tone spiked like a nervous tic, but he started working immediately.

  G nudged Darrin against his belts as Free Lunch reversed course. If the bigger rocks in the vicinity hadn’t shifted too much, helm ought to be able to move the ship safely—at least for a couple of k—by following her most recent thrust vectors backward. That might be enough—